We are so programmed by our history with race in America that reaction to the acquittal of George Zimmerman on charges of murdering Trayvon Martin depends largely upon one’s individual, even group experience.

If you are African-American, you might react like former Washington, D.C., homicide detective Rod Wheeler. Appearing on Fox News, Wheeler said many blacks look at quarterback Michael Vick, jailed for taking part in an illegal interstate dog-fighting ring, and wonder why Zimmerman gets away with killing a young black man.

What would it take for an overwhelming majority of Americans to say race relations are improving? According to a new Rasmussen telephone survey of 1,000 people, half of American adults think relations between the races are growing worse, up from 44 percent last year, and 20 percent think relations are getting better. Twenty-six percent believe race relations have stayed about the same, while 18 percent think rate race relations are good or excellent. We could use more of the “good or excellent” people.

Today is the 30th anniversary of the federal holiday celebrating the life of Civil Rights leader and pastor Martin Luther King Jr. Amid celebrations across the country, many activists and politicians have joined a rally in Columbia, S.C., where this year the state removed the Confederate battle flag from the Statehouse grounds.

In the midst of the Trayvon Martin case a few years back, I speculated in these pages about what it would take to move forward on race relations. Considering what’s happened since then—Ferguson, Baltimore, Charleston, Black Lives Matter, campus protests, and climbing murder rates—race relations have taken a big step backward. A little book published last summer has enlightened many readers as to why this might be so.

On Monday, University of Missouri system President Timothy Wolfe and Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin, from the system’s flagship campus in Columbia, stepped down. Normally this might make minor ripples in the news, but this story made national headlines.