An advisory committee in San Francisco is recommending that the city pay reparations to its black residents. The San Francisco Human Rights Commission developed a plan that would pay $5 million to qualifying black residents over the age of 18. The plan also requires the city to commit to pay every low-income black resident a salary of $97,000 a year. While slavery was a dark part of America’s past, we need to ask this question: “Is it right to force current taxpayers to make up for the wrongs that were committed in another era?” All the perpetrators of slavery are dead, and so are their victims. The problem with reparations is that it punishes people for crimes they never committed and awards people for injustices they never experienced.