By the Rev. Robert Fruehwirth and the Rev. Lisa Frost-Phillips
What do people want?
What might people want or need from each other in the process of healing their relationship?
When we don’t know someone, we might assume they’d want what we’d want if we were in their shoes. But especially in cases where we have been divided from someone or a group by a history of wrongs, it’s almost certain they’ll want something different from what we can imagine.
Building a relationship with someone or some group, particularly in the interest of healing reconciliation, means learning to see the world through their eyes. It requires learning what they want or need for their healing and as a part of the restored relationship. We have to be ready to learn what is meaningful to them, and why.
When Archbishop Desmond Tutu led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission following apartheid in South Africa, his commission struggled with what reparations could mean and were surprised when the victims of decades of violence were given a chance to name what they required.
Of course, the idea of reparations in South Africa raised a myriad of questions and strong anxieties. Surely there was no way to calculate or compensate anyone for lost family members or for lifetimes blighted by violence, exploitation and poor education? The payments, Tutu writes, would need to be recognized as symbolic, and distressing judgements would have to be made. People also worried about the impact on the national budget and governmental capacity even for symbolic and limited payments when the victims were so numerous. At the same time, Tutu and the commission recognized that some kind of reparations and rehabilitation measures would be essential for healing and necessary to counterbalance the amnesty offered to the officials who had presided over apartheid.
But here is the surprise: When the people in power began to ask the victims about what they wanted, what would actually constitute reparation for them and lead towards healing, the answers often were not exorbitant demands that would bankrupt the government. They were instead deeply personal and painfully poignant. As Tutu wrote,
We on the commission were often deeply humbled that those who came before us were so frequently so modest in their expectations and requests. “Can I have a tombstone erected for my child?” “Could the TRC help to find the remains of my loved one, even just a bone, so that we could give him a decent burial?” Could I get assistance to educate my children?” It would be a very sad day if we were to disappoint those with such…requests. [Tutu, Desmond. No Future without Forgiveness. New York: Doubleday, 1999. p. 64]
Anxious thoughts of budgets and calculations were swept away. Someone is asking not for $10,000 or $100,000 for each victim but for help in finding the bone of a loved one killed in racial violence. The human reality is suddenly huge, and anxiety about budgets becomes insignificant.
This story came to mind last year when leaders from St. Matthew’s, Hillsborough, were in conversation with the leadership of the Stagville Descendants Council, Ricky Hart and Beverly Evans.
St. Matthew’s and the Stagville Descendants Council were writing a joint grant to further collaboration and fellowship between the two communities, especially meaningful as it meant building relationships between the descendants of people our parishioners had enslaved, sometimes with great cruelty, and recognizing the importance of free and enslaved African-Americans in the foundation of St. Matthew’s.
St. Matthew’s had many pre-formed ideas about what the Stagville Descendants Council might want to do with the grant or with funds raised in the parish. But just as Tutu’s commission was surprised, so were we when Ricky Hart, the chairman of SDC, said that his first priority for the grant was locating the graves of descendants from the Stagville plantation. They wanted the bones of their ancestors, just knowing where they lay.
Of course, the situations in South Africa in the 1980s and the Diocese of North Carolina in 2025 are very different. The point, however, is that when we begin talking about reparations outside of a frank and trusting relationship, we have no idea what we are even talking about. Our minds instantly create anxieties and summon impossibilities as we imagine what will be asked of us, which make the whole idea seem unreasonable.
We can’t even imagine, ahead of conversation, what the other party will require, let alone understand the human depth of their situation, until we engage in relationships. Once we have these relationships, we will likely be surprised by the requests, as Tutu was and as St. Matthew’s was. The point is to start with relationships, not with anxious, abstract speculation about what reparations could possibly mean. We make a good start by proving ourselves trustworthy, by listening, and by building friendships in which the folks who had no voice can finally share what is in their hearts and minds.
[Image: Ricky Hart and Beverly Evans, from the Stagville Descendants Council, with Sydney Nathans and his wife, Judith. Sydney Nathans wrote “To Free A Family,” which tells the story of Mary Walker who fled enslavement from the Cameron family (of St. Matthew’s), leaving behind her mother and children. She spent the rest of her life painstakingly working for their freedom. It is a very moving and hard story and at the time he wrote it, there were very few historians doing such.]
