Ahmaud Arbery was chased down, shot, and killed by two white men because he was a black man jogging. The white men who killed him have not been charged, because they are white and because one of them is retired from the district attorney’s office and police force. If the skin color of the murderer and the victim were reversed, you know the assailants would be in jail right now and there would be a public outcry.

Armed white men have been storming state houses all over the country, threatening government workers and demanding that governors end stay at home orders and reopen the economy. If these “protesters” were black, they would be stopped their tracks—tear gassed, arrested, or shot. That’s what happens when people of color protest. But white men seem to get a free pass.

What’s both exhausting and terrifying about these events is that they are nothing new in our culture. While they are shocking and despicable, they are not surprising. I can only imagine how weary, how frustrated, how fearful and alone my friends of color feel, especially men of color and parents of men of color.

I know as a white ally, I need to do more.