From the moment a new immigrant steps onto Ellis Island, America sells itself as the land of limitless possibility—an intellectual blank slate where beliefs are meant to be forged in the fires of reason rather than inherited bloodlines. Yet beneath that aspirational veneer lies a potent creed, one that demands its own form of ideological conformity.

In theory, the United States should be a paradise for freethinkers: a nation whose founding documents exalt individual liberty, skepticism of authority, and the Enlightenment’s valorization of reason. The First Amendment’s protection of speech and religion seems tailor-made to shelter those who question dogma, tradition, and entrenched power.

But ideals are one thing, lived reality another. Americans often find that straying too far from the “official” creed—whether by challenging unfettered markets or criticizing founding myths—invites swift social sanctions. In practice, deviance from accepted narratives can brand you as unpatriotic or even subversive.

This tension stems from America’s identity as a creedal nation rather than an ethnic one. Where many countries lean on shared ancestry or cultural homogeneity to forge national unity, the U.S. leans on a shared set of principles. And principles, as it turns out, can be policed just as rigorously as lineage.

So does America really want freethinkers? The short answer: it wants them up to a point. Freethinking that reinforces prosperity, innovation, and technological progress is celebrated—think Silicon Valley iconoclasts or academic mavericks. But freethinking that threatens political stability, economic orthodoxy, or the consumerist consensus is often met with suspicion or outright hostility.

At the core of our societal structures lies a carefully maintained illusion: a rigid Black-and-white (and often Black/brown-white) framework meant to sort, separate, and subjugate. This binary system didn’t emerge by chance—it was crafted through policy, propaganda, and prejudice to keep power consolidated and communities divided. Yet, the lived truth of identity almost always defies such neat categorization. In my own experience, that truth surfaced unexpectedly through subtle changes in skin tone—a physical manifestation that led me to question the validity and implications of racial labels as historically and socially constructed entities.

Historically, groups like southern Italians, Greeks, and Eastern Europeans occupied ambiguous racial spaces in American society—sometimes perceived as “not quite white” due to their darker complexions and unfamiliar cultural practices. My own ancestry, roughly 30% southern Italian, reflects this complexity. With Mediterranean features and skin that tans deeply, I found myself questioning the contemporary idea of “whiteness” and its connection to legacies of colonialism and slavery. This category often felt at odds with my personal values and family history.

The change in my appearance was purely coincidental, stemming simply from spending more time outdoors. However, over time, it became clear that these natural shifts had profound implications within the simplistic racial binaries of American culture. The more my appearance changed, the more uncomfortable I became with being neatly categorized into a single racial identity.

I’ve never taken the LSAT, but I have taken a lot of breaks in diners. Waffle House, Huddle House, Joe’s Diner, Lena’s Diner, Friendly’s when they still had the booths with jukebox buttons. Once, I watched a man in Alabama write his resignation letter on a napkin while drinking five cups of coffee and eating a slice of lemon meringue pie he didn’t seem to enjoy. He looked calm. Maybe calmer than I’ll ever be.

(For context: tech entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian famously decided to abandon law school plans after walking out of the LSAT and heading straight to a Waffle House. Reddit was born soon after. I’m just saying.)

There’s something about diners. They’re less judgmental than cafés, less chaotic than Sheetz, and more permanent than fast food. They sit still while the world spins around them—open late, open early, and open to everyone. And if you sit long enough, maybe over hash browns and an existential crisis, you start to realize that diner menus aren’t just food lists.

They’re records.

Notebooks of regional identity, economic history, culinary defiance. Why does this place serve grits with everything? Because it’s the South. Why is there still liver and onions on the menu? Because someone out there still wants it. Why are the prices in Comic Sans? Because nobody told them not to. And why do so many menus feel like a mash-up of grandma’s handwriting, local tradition, and a mid-’90s Photoshop experiment? Because that’s exactly what they are.

I stopped for pancakes at a diner just off Route 9 in Plattsburgh, NY (ZIP: 12901, for my fellow map nerds). It’s one of those places where the menu hasn’t budged since about 1983—and neither have the prices, bless their hearts. As I drowned my short stack in syrup, I overheard the table next to me stumbling through their breakfast order in hesitant French, earning bemused smiles and gentle confusion from their very-much-English-speaking server.

Here’s the kicker: Lacolle, Quebec, is a breezy 40-minute drive north. Cross that line, and French flows effortlessly—c’est naturel. But in Plattsburgh, French feels oddly out of place, like cowboy boots at a vegan potluck.

Contrast that with Texas, where you can be miles and miles from the Rio Grande and Spanish is as comfy as old denim. Of course, Texas spent a significant chunk of its formative years as part of Mexico—history has deep roots, deeper even than pecan trees. In fact, there's still a quiet undercurrent among some Texans who feel the border never quite landed right, culturally speaking. Texas is practically its own country—Tex-Mex traditions, bilingual street signs, and communities where crossing linguistic boundaries happens every day without a blink.

Why the stark difference in Plattsburgh, then? Historically, the border between the U.S. and Canada was largely shaped by treaties between distant governments rather than by cultural or economic tides. The northeastern U.S. border, once delineated, hardened into an identity line. Economics played its role too: trade, jobs, and daily life largely stayed separate, preventing cultural blending.