Dear Echo Hawk Family:

     The idea of race ripened into life just in time to guide the unfolding of the American social contract. Abiding by this bond, racial identity shaped the generations that followed. It is something that our parents and their parents greatly valued, handing down the traditions of race to us from their hearts.

     It took me several years to rethink my commitment to race. I finally decided to act on what I considered to be significant news: the news that race does not tell us the truth about humankind, and scientific scholarship rejects the traditions of race as a source of insight into human biological diversity.

     What does this news about race mean? I don’t know for sure; I have more questions than answers.

     But I think it surely means that our racial world must redefine itself. And I believe it will become increasingly evident that none of us have the luxury of simply ignoring the issue. We must each ponder what race means in our inner worlds and what role race should play in the meanings of our lives.

     My very first 45 (an old-fashioned recording, not a pistol) was Barry McGuire’s "Eve of Destruction." I lived in Puerto Rico and my father brought it from the States as a Christmas gift in 1965. I listened to this record with great interest, piecing together the lyrics and pondering what it declared about the mysterious goings-on in nearby America.

     For the intellectual superstructures of race, the eve of destruction has already come and gone with a whisper in the sayings of science. This news will sound ominous for people who treasure racial identity. But deciding that good reasons exist to rethink how race shapes our lives, I thought it might be useful to write The Magic Children.

     An unknown future is almost upon us. Finding our own separate paths into this future, I hope we will look for ways to do together whatever happens next, and to discover together what kind of world lies beyond the end of race.