Karl Zinsmeister

About the author: Karl Zinsmeister is the J.B. Fuqua Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. He is also the editor in chief of AEI's monthly magazine, the American Enterprise.

The campaign seeking the payment of slavery reparations to the descendants of African American slaves is gaining momentum through the involvement of prominent lawyers, activists, and the public. While reparations should have been paid immediately following the Civil War, identifying who should pay and receive reparations is now impossible. After all, the majority of Americans living today have ancestors who were neither slaves nor slave masters or have members of both groups in their family trees. Most important, America has already paid for the sin of slavery; more than 620,000 Americans...