National reparations support has never exceeded roughly 20 percent since 1997

Evidence

The first national poll about reparations was done by ABC News in 1997. Why 1997? Perhaps because in June of that year, President Bill Clinton launched his national conversation on race at the University of California at San Diego. The question polled was “Do you think the federal government should or should not pay money to Black Americans whose ancestors were slaves as compensation for that slavery?” Only 19 percent supported reparations, with 77 percent opposed and 4 percent without an opinion. The racial breakdown was only 10 percent of white respondents supported reparations and 88 percent opposed. For black Americans 65/28 percent was the support/opposition breakdown. Since 2001, polling shows that “a substantial majority of Americans oppose reparations, regardless of the modality, provider, or the recipient.” Whether compensation takes the form of direct cash payments or in-kind benefits, whether they are paid for by the federal government or by private corporations, or whether they are limited to descendants of those enslaved or not, the majority of those surveyed oppose reparations for black Americans. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 480

Categorization

• XREF: Hard baseline data for the ‘accounting not charity’ persuasion strategy — the chapter’s stated purpose is converting this opposition.