By the time the bartender slid my plate of os à moelle in front of me, Michael and I were already deep into a conversation about private schools, American politics, and the fragile architecture of belonging.

He told me he was eighteen, a senior at a private high school in Washington, D.C., visiting Montreal alone. We were two strangers united by proximity—he’d sat next to me at the bar counter—and the oddly democratic intimacy of solo travel.

We began with school, as people often do when they’re seeking neutral ground. I told him I’d gone to private school, too—two decades ago, but the muscle memory still strong. We agreed that the real value of such schools wasn’t in the books or classrooms, but in the people you met there: ambitious, unusual, sometimes unkind, but interesting.

The conversation meandered, as good bar talks often do, to politics. “A lot of us—millennials, Gen Z, whatever—voted for Trump last year,” he said. “But most of us regret it now.” His family of German origin runs an auto parts supply business in the capital. With the chaos of federal layoffs, demand thinned. “We didn’t anticipate how different he’d be from his first term.” he added.

What surprised me, though, was how gracefully he moved into more charged territory. I asked him, cautiously, what he thought of DEI—Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. It was not a trap. I wanted to know. And he answered not with slogans, but with the slow, careful cadences of someone thinking out loud.

“I get the idea,” he said. “We need to level the playing field. Totally. But sometimes it feels like new rules just push around the old unfairness instead of fixing it.” He mentioned Asian students—how, in his view, they were penalized in elite university admissions despite strong academic records.

While I told Michael that my view diverged when it comes to professional schools—such as medical and law schools—I believe affirmative action has a place there, as these professions ultimately serve the communities they come from, and should reflect the diversity of those they aim to support.

And then came the moment that has stuck with me most. “You know,” Michael said, turning toward me with something like earnest defiance, “they tell us to say Happy Holidays not to say Merry Christmas anymore. Like it’s somehow offensive to other cultures. But if we’re respecting everyone’s culture, why not ours too?”

Ours. It was a small word, but heavy with implications. There is a paradox embedded in the language of DEI—one I’ve been chewing on for months. Inclusion that forgets the mainstream, that erases rather than engages, will fail at its very premise. Respect must travel in all directions. Inclusion without respect is an empty gesture; true belonging demands both. To make space for the new, we don’t need to burn the old house down. We just need to expand it.

Michael’s thoughts weren’t polished. He’s eighteen. But they were honest, which is harder to find these days than a well-reasoned thesis. I suspect he will grow. Most of us do. But that night, under the soft glow of Montreal bar lights, I found myself grateful for the conversation—for the reminder that understanding, like democracy, begins in small, uneasy, hopeful exchanges.