Unfortunately, passing an amendment is nearly impossible in the United States, leading to a much more hateful and uncompromising struggle to get everything you care about before the Supreme Court.
Scalia has this nice little statistic showing that just about 2% of the American population can kill any constitutional amendment.
Not any 2%, of course, just the 2% in the least populous states.
I have a feeling the country was at least 2% racists in a few low population states in 1964 when the twenty fourth amendment was passed to get rid of the poll tax. If you think the current system is bad, pass an amendment and fix it.