The Racial Divide Surrounding United States of America National Anthem Protests in the National Football League

Abstract

Issues related to race have long been of interest to social scientists. One such issue that has received near daily attention throughout the Fall of 2017 concerns the protests undertaken by National Football League (NFL) players regarding the national anthem. Although there has been some descriptive work on citizen views about anthem protests, there has been no empirical work examining the correlates of different types of anthem protests and subsequent reactions by the NFL and team owners to those protests. Using data obtained from a sample of young adults, we find that Black respondents were more likely to support all types of anthem protests and also to believe that players who protest the anthem should not be disciplined by the NFL nor team owners. Moreover, these strong race effects remain even after controlling for several key correlates, which themselves point to some key distinctions regarding how young adults view the anthem protests.