“We’re talking about acknowledging what has happened ... owning up to the harms that have been committed against Black Americans from the time they were brought here forcibly,” says folklorist A. Kirsten Mullen, co-author with Duke University public policy professor William A. Darity Jr. of “From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century.” Reparations would propagate the notion that “Black Americans are a hopeless, hapless, and oppressed race who need pity and handouts to succeed,” he said in January. A 2021 Pew Research Center poll found that 77% of Black respondents supported reparations for descendants of enslaved people, with 18% of white respondents saying the same.