Understanding Public Opinion: A Key Tool for the Reparations Movement

5 min readSep 24, 2024

In any movement for social change, understanding public opinion can be a powerful tool. It not only informs campaign strategies and decisions about resource allocation but also helps movements tell compelling stories, design policies that resonate with the public, and evaluate progress over time. In the context of the reparations movement, public opinion data can be particularly valuable, offering insights into how the American public perceives reparations and how these perceptions are evolving.

At the highest level, “reparations” is the process of the state making amends for harm. While most people think of reparations simply as compensation, a wider variety of material and symbolic benefits to victims and their families are involved. As defined by the United Nations, reparations refers to measures by the government to repair violations of human rights by providing a range of material and symbolic benefits to victims or their families as well as affected communities. Reparations for Black Americans applies the UN reparations framework to the human rights violations of slavery and its legacies, including racial violence, Jim Crow, and discrimination. This application includes Reckoning, Acknowledgement, Accountability/Cessation, and Redress.

This month Liberation Ventures released the first Reparations Beliefs and Sentiments Poll, a comprehensive review of where the country currently stands. This poll has huge potential as a tool for the movement in a variety of ways:

Informing Campaign Strategies with Public Opinion Data

Public opinion data can guide movement leaders in making strategic decisions about where to focus their efforts and resources. For example, in Detroit, advocates decided to pursue a ballot measure campaign for a Reparations Task Force after discovering that 63% of the city’s residents supported the initiative. This data-driven decision-making process not only increased the likelihood of success but also ensured that the campaign was rooted in the community’s actual desires.

Telling Data-Driven Stories

Public opinion data also allows movements to tell stories with the evidence to back them up. One striking example is the “hope gap” in the reparations movement: while 72% of Black people support comprehensive reparations, just 18% believe that the US will ever pass reparations policy. This gap between hope and expectation highlights the need for continued advocacy and public education efforts, as it underscores a disconnect between the desire for justice and the belief in its feasibility.

Designing Policies That Reflect Public Desires

Effective policy design requires a deep understanding of what people want. In Berkeley, a community survey revealed that educational payments to Descendants received 80% support from both Descendant and non-Descendant communities — more than any other surveyed intervention. This type of data is invaluable for policymakers who aim to create reparations programs that are both meaningful and broadly supported.

Evaluating Progress Over Time

Public opinion polls also serve as a tool for evaluating progress and understanding how far movements have come — and how far they still need to go. Over the past 15 years, support for cash payments — one of the most controversial elements of reparations — has doubled to approximately 30%. While this growth is encouraging, it also highlights the need for continued advocacy and education to further increase public support.

The Importance of Polling in Understanding Public Opinion

Polling is one of the most effective ways to gauge public opinion. In simple terms, “public opinion” refers to the collective beliefs and attitudes of a population about a specific topic — in this case, reparations. Polls are essentially temperature-taking instruments; they help us understand the state of public opinion at a given moment in time.

Polls are powerful because they typically survey a small, random sample of people within a population. If conducted properly, the average beliefs of this sample closely mirror those of the broader population. This makes polling an invaluable tool for movements seeking to understand how their messages and strategies resonate with the public.

While polling provides valuable snapshots of public opinion, it is not a substitute for deep, nuanced research needed to understand and shift narratives. Polling must be complemented with other forms of qualitative research, historical analysis, and on-the-ground storytelling to drive true cultural and narrative change. Polls give us data points, but they must be contextualized and expanded upon to understand the full landscape of public sentiment.

Introducing the 2024 Public Opinion Poll on Reparations

The 2024 Public Opinion Poll is the first in a series of regular polls designed to track changes in public opinion on reparations over time. In regular intervals, Liberation Ventures will conduct this national poll to assess shifts in support, familiarity with the concept of reparations, and other critical factors. This ongoing effort will provide a clear picture of how public attitudes toward reparations evolve over time, helping to inform the movement’s strategies and objectives.

Acknowledging Our Partners and Advisors

The success of the 2024 Public Opinion Poll would not have been possible without the incredible support of academics, movement leaders, and polling experts. We are especially grateful to:

Co-Principal Investigator: Christina Pao, a PhD candidate at Princeton University, who played a central role in designing, deploying, and analyzing the survey results.
Development Survey Advisors: Elliot Woods and Trevor Smith, who provided critical feedback on Liberation Ventures’ Development Survey, which informed the design of the 2024 survey.
Survey and Polling Experts: Research expert advisors provided feedback on poll design, question wording, and methodology to minimize bias and enhance the accuracy of the findings.
Dr. Ed Freeland, Executive Director of the Princeton University Survey Research Center;
Camille Lloyd, Director of the Gallup Center on Black Voices
Whitney DuPree, Associate Director of the Gallup Center on Black Voices
Kate Den Houter, Research Associate at Gallup
Calista Small, Research Manager at More in Common
Scott Hutcheson, Executive Director of E Pluribus Unum
Dr. Erika Weissinger, Assistant Professor of Practice at University of California, Berkeley, Goldman School of Public Policy
Anthony Torres, Director of Communications at Get Free
Dr. Efraín García Sánchez, Economic Mobility Fellow at Stanford SPARQ
Dashram Pai, Yan Zhen Zhu, and others from the 2024 Princeton ReMatch+ program

We also want to recognize our movement partners who played an essential role in the early design and prioritization of the survey. Their insights and feedback were crucial in shaping the survey to reflect accurate descriptions and definitions of the movement for reparations. Special thanks to:

Nkechi Taifa and Kibibi Tyehimba, Reparation Education Project
Jessica Ann Mitchell Aiyuwor, National Black Cultural Information Trust
New Jersey Institute for Social Justice
Media 2070 Project at Free Press
The Legacy Coalition

Conclusion

As the reparations movement continues to grow, understanding public opinion will remain a crucial part of our strategy. By leveraging polling data, we can make informed decisions, tell compelling stories, design policies that resonate with the public, and track our progress over time. The 2024 Public Opinion Poll marks an important step in this ongoing effort, and we are deeply grateful to all those who contributed to its success. Together, we can continue to build a movement that is not only powerful but also deeply in tune with the desires and beliefs of the people it seeks to serve.