Reparations have become an increasingly high-profile subject, with the Biden administration signaling interest in studying their potential effects. With a first-ever pilot reparations program underway in Evanston, Illinois, and the backing of the first Black fed president, reparations have shifted to a more mainstream policy proposal.

Raphael Bostic, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, expressed his interest during a Monday interview on CNN.

"We have African Americans today who have a lot less wealth, in part because they have not been able to inherit the wealth that would have accrued had their ancestors been able to accrue that wealth," Bostic said.

He pointed to housing discrimination. While explicit tactics like redlining at illegal today, modern versions can still keep disadvantaged communities in a downward spiral.

"There are definitely merits to [reparations] in the sense that, if people have been harmed by laws, then there should be a discussion about redress," Bostic said.

This comes as the Chicago suburb of Evanston has begun a reparations program. A 3% tax on legal marijuana funds home loans for those who can prove they’ve been harmed by housing discrimination.

"We had to do something radically different to address the racial divide that we had in our city, which includes historic oppression, exclusion and divestment in the Black community," said Alderman Robin Rue Simmons.

The idea had attracted national interest during the 2020 Democratic primaries. In February, President Joe Biden said reparations should be studied, and a House judiciary subcommittee proposed a commission to do exactly that.

A reparations bill would face steep opposition from Republicans as well as some Democrats.

A working paper from the Minneapolis Fed found that reparations alone won’t pull Black communities up. "Century-long exclusions" cause recipients to "enter into reparations with pessimistic beliefs about risky returns and to forego investment opportunities,” it read.

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