Being a father makes me re-evaluate everything, makes me wonder how I am shaping, deliberately and accidentally, a young human life. In sending my 2-year-old son to preschool (he is now 4), I worried about how his teachers and classmates would socialize him.

Would he become even more of a boy? Because by 2, he was already, despite our best efforts, identifying as a masculine child who loves Batman and “Star Wars.” How would he grapple with race? Because by 3, children at his liberal school were using racial epithets and pulling their eyes into slants.

And what about Thanksgiving? His school was already teaching him the same myth about Pilgrims and Indians that I had learned. I wanted to give him alternatives.

“Do you know what Thanksgiving means?” I asked him.

“Yes.” He thought about the word I had taught him. “Genocide!”