A majority of Americans are fine with pro athletes speaking their mind on social justice issues ... as long as they do it away from the field.
That’s the broad conclusion of a new poll from Yahoo News and YouGov surveying a broad cross-section of Americans. The responses generally broke down along expected lines, with Republican respondents generally opposing activism and Democratic respondents generally favoring it. However, nearly half of all respondents noted that their attitudes to ongoing protests and demonstrations have changed over the course of the last five years.
Change in acceptance of protests in sports
Colin Kaepernick kicked off the modern protest era in the NFL when he began kneeling in 2016.