ABSTRACT
How can we recognize critical moments, in personal life or the broader world? And what can we do when we recognize one?
The 1960s, for example, were a time of social ferment, when minorities, women, prisoners, and other disempowered groups challenged long-standing social structures and relations (Gitlin, 1993). Yet, at the time, not everyone recognized the significance of those challenges. Some, even on the left, dismissed them as fads that would not last. Others saw them for what they were, but opposed them, just as conservatives today urge that with the election of the nation’s first African American president the United States is a postracial society with no need for additional soul-searching (Brown et al., 2005).
