My response below to this article in the Daily Mail:

One-in-five white people say the civil rights movement 'has gone too far' – while half of African Americans believe they will never have full equal rights in America, survey reveals

As I see it from my study of history, the problem is rooted in the sad fact the average person has little to no historical understanding of how the state of race relations got to this point in the first place. 

They have little knowledge or empathy for the damage inflicted by the rise of “Jim Crow” laws, the sudden end of Reconstruction, Redemption and “The Lost Cause,” “Separate but Equal” segregation which was anything but equal, the Supreme Court’s invalidation of numerous Civil Rights laws dating back to the end of the Civil War, openly racist presidents such as Woodrow Wilson among many others, tolerance for the rise of the KKK, turning a blind eye to thousands of lynchings and other terrorist acts, “Red Lining” housing restrictions for non-Whites, the “Green Book,” widespread use of Confederate symbols to intimidate, and more than a century of framing Blacks as “inferior to Whites and a danger to American culture.”

All of this has worked to ingrain racist attitudes and actions deep within our national psyche, whether we admit to it or not. And not just a Black-White problem but including Native Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and others. What we sorely need is a change to our education system that emphasizes the reality of history versus the White-washed standards we have now, as well as a serious moment of reflection on our own personal and collective values.