Sixty-eight percent of U.S. adults believe it is “very likely” that there will be more racially-charged protests and clashes nationwide. Another 28 percent believe this unrest is “somewhat likely” — adding up to a whopping 96 percent of Americans who feel this way, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
The outlook comes on the heels of the past week’s riots and protests in Baltimore following the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray while in police custody.
More than half of Americans — 54 percent — believe this type of unrest is likely in the metropolitan area closest to where they live. This expectation was high regardless of race: 53 percent of whites said they expect racial unrest, while 46 percent of African-Americans said the same.
However, reasons for the unrest vary along racial lines.
Six in 10 African-Americans said unrest like what was seen in Baltimore is because of “people with longstanding frustrations about police mistreatment of African-Americans that have not been addressed.” Twenty-seven percent said that the riots were “caused by people who used the protests about the death of an African-American man in police custody as an excuse to engage in looting and violence.”
However among whites, 58 percent said the unrest was an excuse to loot, compared to 32 percent who attributed the unrest to police mistreatment.
The poll of roughly 500 U.S. adults — 111 of whom were African-Americans — was conducted April 28-30.
