Messaging that traces post-slavery government discrimination shifts public opinion toward reparations

Evidence

The results of the focus group proved to me what I had already suspected based on my conversations with Drew over the years: that people could be persuaded of the necessity and feasibility of reparations when the information was conveyed in the right context; and that the value of equality of opportunity and fairness could cross partisan boundaries and be helpful for garnering support. One aspect of our messaging that was especially effective was that we drew a historical throughline from the Thirteenth Amendment and the end of chattel slavery to today and demonstrated all the ways in which slavery had shape-shifted so that the government could continue to discriminate against black Americans. Another important aspect was explaining how the government had successfully paid compensation to other groups in the past, including white enslavers. Once participants understood the true cost of the harms imposed, and that the payments were not limited to individual black Americans but included systemic changes, and saw that reparations were an attainable solution for compensating those harms, their attitudes dramatically shifted in favor of reparations. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 504

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘two persuasive pillars’ — shape-shifting slavery and paid-compensation precedent — could anchor an article on how to message reparations to persuasive majorities.
• XREF: The precedent-of-paying-white-enslavers claim ties to the reparations-as-accounting framing from earlier chapters and to the ‘government paid compensation’ thread. — connects to: Sympathy and moral outrage mobilize reparative action better than guilt does — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 1752