Is there a worse idea than reparations?

Jeff Jacoby writes about the latest reparations shakedown.

As soon as he learned the ugly truth, the chairman of financial-services giant Wachovia Corp. issued a remorseful nostra culpa.
"We are deeply saddened by these findings," Ken Thompson said last week. "I apologize to all Americans, and especially to African-Americans." Wachovia acknowledged that it "cannot change the past or atone for the harm that was done." But it promised to make amends by subsidizing the work of organizations involved in "furthering awareness and education of African-American history."

HOWEVER

The 13th Amendment abolished slavery in 1865, and Wachovia wasn't founded until 1879.
In other words, Thompson's apology was for something Wachovia didn't do, in an era when it didn't exist, under laws it didn't break. And as an act of contrition for this wrong it never committed, it can now expect to pay millions of dollars to activists for a wrong they never suffered.

My take:
Slavery was a horrid episode in our countries past and a stain on our history. No amount of hush money funding for various scams to put money in the pockets of the latest protesters will absolve that stain. It merely transfers some of the stain to the current race hucksters. Who pays the hush money? The individual stock holder and eventually the customers. No one who profited from the slavery can pay because they have been dead around a hundred years. The ultimate victim of these scams is the black youth still being told that being angry and resentful about something that happened to their grandfather's grandfather is the way to go through life.

Since this subject seems to keep coming up, here is some reading:
Thomas Sowell in March 2004
Sowell again in July 2000
Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks - and Racist Too by David Horowitz