America is at the proverbial crossroads. We’re trapped by racism and poverty, and a town called Ferguson—where I have been working since the day before Michael Brown’s funeral—has shown us that we haven’t yet decided which path we want to take.

Down one of the pathways is the future. Powered by one of the most diverse and tech-savvy populations in the world, our beloved, conflicted country has what it takes to solve the world’s problems. It won’t be easy, but you can’t tell me we lack the vision and creative talent needed to end problems like police brutality and poverty—all while building an equitable and just society.

You can walk on any college campus or down any urban block and see that we have the brainpower and swag to innovate our way to what Martin Luther King Jr. called the “Beloved Community,” a world without poverty and racism. Just like the Black Panthers, and the leaders of civil-rights movement before us, we’re crowd-sourcing campaigns that build the community and social programs to fix our many problems.

There is another path, however, that we’ve been enticed to stay on for quite some time.

Racism, sexism, and structural inequality are so familiar to us that it’s almost hard not to stay the current course. Our past, and all of its ugliness, just keeps lingering and pushing us to repeat the mistakes of previous generations. In this country, the fact that more black men are incarcerated or on probation or parole in 2014 than were enslaved in 1850 isn’t futuristic at all. It’s quite backward. Period. But here we are: watching the events unravel in Ferguson as if it’s 1967, and everything is in black and white.

We must pick the first path, we have no choice. But to move on down that road, we are going to need a serious intervention, and we need it now. The weight of the 20th century is holding us back.

The longer we wait to chose to take that first step toward the future, the harder it gets. Our country is literally burning. Wealth inequality is reaching near Great Depression levels. To truly transform our society to one that sees fewer Mike Browns, we’re going to need to rely on more than campaign slogans and bickering politicians.

Good thing our generation hasn’t stopped dreaming. Besides the technological miracles that assist our struggle, we have also developed emotional intelligence that helps us challenge the traditional boundaries of identity politics. Even in Ferguson, I’ve seen 50-year-old white people chanting, “Black lives matter!,” in front of riot police. It’s depressing that we’re still dealing with these issues, but most of us are on the right side of history. Most of us.

Although many of us live in segregated communities, technology has brought us together in previously unimaginable ways. We may never live on the same blocks or hang out in the same restaurants or bars, but our common interests are intrinsically intertwined. Some people are never going to get it, and for them it’s to the hinterland, as America’s growing diversity will rapidly alter the face of the country over the next two to three decades.

To make this work, we’re going to have to get honest with each other. Our expanding personal freedoms, combined with technological advances, have seen us acting more individualistically than those that have come before us. Let’s admit it. Millennials are less likely to join a traditional organization like religion than older generations, but social media like Ustream, Twitter, and Instagram allows each of us to be leaders in previously unimaginable ways. While critics call our urge to document our lives narcissistic, it’s a lot deeper than that. As Americans, we know that there is nothing more powerful than our voice and opinions. Thrown in with a selfie here and there, our frequent status updates have disrupted the status quo.