Column: Why do whites oppose the NFL protests?

538: Just as in previous polls on this issue, there are huge racial and partisan divides.

According to the HuffPost/YouGov poll, most black people (66 percent) and Democrats (62 percent) think that kneeling is appropriate, while most white people (60 percent) and Republicans (87 percent) think it is inappropriate.

But opinions among these groups aren’t uniform: 29 percent of black people back the new NFL policy (per Yahoo/YouGov), 34 percent of black people either feel kneeling is inappropriate or aren’t sure how they feel about the issue (per HuffPost/YouGov) and 23 percent of Democrats think kneeling is inappropriate (again per HuffPost). In contrast, just 8 percent of Republicans think it is appropriate. ...

There’s a lot going on in these questions, which makes interpreting them tricky: Patriotism. Free speech. Race. Politics. President Trump. There are a lot hot-button issues that intersect in the NFL protests. As a result, slightly different questions can yield very different results. ...

Finally, it’s not surprising that the national anthem protests are unpopular: As we wrote last year, protests are often unpopular. (If the majority of people supported a position, you likely wouldn’t need to protest in the first place.) About 60 percent of Americans disliked the “sit-ins” conducted by civil rights protesters and the March on Washington led by Martin Luther King Jr. during the 1960s. King himself is revered now, but 63 percent of Americans viewed him unfavorably in a 1966 Gallup survey, compared to 33 percent who had favorable views. Vietnam War protests were also unpopular, as were those against the Iraq War more than three decades later.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/many-americans-agree-with-trumps-nfl-anthem-stance-so-hell-likely-keep-talking-about-it/