I, like so many others, have been lamenting the loss of Ahmaud Arbery’s life and subsequent miscarriage of justice at the hands of white supremacists. A common thread keeps popping up in some of my white friends’ responses to this horrific crime that I’d like to explore a little more.

I’ve seen several people say things like “I get it now” in reference to their bodies being safe when they are jogging. They are, in essence, saying that they did not “get it” until this moment despite hundreds of years of history in the United States that teaches us that Black bodies are not treated the same as white bodies. I hope what I have to offer is accepted as constructive criticism; it is not meant to belittle anyone for this response. Instead, I want to have a conversation with my white friends about how we respond to Black people and their lived experiences.

Like many, I’ve been sheltering in place these last two months, and in doing so, I’ve taken the opportunity to re-read some favorite books. C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia is one of the best-selling series of all time. This week, the same day that video leaked of a Black man gunned down by a white father and son, I started re-reading the second book in this series.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe details the lives of four siblings who are sent to live with an old professor in the country during WWII to keep them safe from air raids in London. Lucy, the youngest sister, finds herself in the land of Narnia after stepping through the back of a wardrobe. When she returns to the real world, no one believes that she stepped into an alternate universe and had tea with a talking faun named Mr. Tumnus. Later, her brother, Edmund, finds his way into Narnia and meets an evil witch. Upon returning to the real world, Edmund lies about what he saw and experienced and says Lucy is making things up. The two older siblings, Peter and Susan, play off Lucy’s stories as being a part of her vivid imagination.

Peter and Susan have a conversation with their guardian, Professor Kirke, that might provide us some guidance about how to proceed. If we want to see real change and Black lives saved, we have to do more than go out for a solidarity jog and post a picture of our fitness trackers. We must confront the inherent biases in our hearts and shed light in the corners of our world that continue to enslave Black bodies in the prison of racism.

Lucy’s siblings discuss how they are worried about her mental health—that perhaps the stress of the war is causing her to lie. They suggest that perhaps she is even going mad. The Professor stops them and notes that he wishes schools taught logic. He asks a very important question:

How do you know that your sister’s story is not true?

Peter and Susan are considerably stumped. They have never known their sister to be a liar. When they suggest that perhaps she has gone mad, the Professor shoots them down quickly.

He continues with this logical premise.

“There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. You know she doesn’t tell lies, and it is obvious that she is not mad. For the moment then and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth.”

In the very next chapter, all four children find themselves tumbling out of the wardrobe into the snowy forests of Narnia. Peter, realizing his mistake, turns toward his sister and says, “I apologize for not believing you. I’m sorry. Will you shake hands?”

When they confront Edmund, asking why he made everyone think Lucy was a liar, Edmund shrugs his shoulders and curses his siblings in his mind.

White friends, there are those among us who have intentionally called our Black friends liars. There are those among us who have gone out of our way to disparage, mock, gaslight, and shame Black people for living in their skin. We built a country on their backs through slavery, made it worse through Jim Crow, and continue to subjugate them by funneling disproportionate numbers of Black men into the prison system with disproportionate punitive measures compared to their white counterparts. Like Edmund, we’ve shrugged off their struggle, their stories, and their dignity.

I believe there are many of us who have acted like Peter and Susan. On the surface level, we do not accept our Black friends’ experiences as valid. We call them liars and question whether their version of the truth is a kind of madness. Because WE don’t experience it, it must not be true for them.

The same people I see investing in marijuana farms with the changing legal landscape decide Botham Jean, who was gunned down on his couch when an off-duty police officer entered his home in error, wasn’t as great a guy as everyone says because he had a little pot in his bedroom.

The same people who laugh away underage college kids having a little fun say that Eric Garner should have complied when he died after being placed in a choke hold for selling loose cigarettes.

Smarter people than me have analyzed the psychological affects these repeated justifications have on the Black community at large. The problem is in our automatic response to negate the lived experiences of our Black brothers and sisters. Even if we focus solely on the instances in which we have justified our attitudes toward Black people to the modern age, our Black friends—our siblings whom we should love dearly—have been whipped daily for decades by the court of White opinion.

Can we start as Peter did here: I apologize for not believing you. I’m sorry.

I am not suggesting that we throw critical thinking out the window or that there isn’t merit to investigating incidents that may or may not have a racial component. What I am suggesting is that perhaps we offer our Black friends the same benefit of the doubt that we offer our white friends in similar situations. What I am suggesting is that we face the truth as uncomfortable as it makes us, so that we might start dismantling the attitudes that contribute to our Black friends feeling as if their lives do not in fact matter.

If you follow my social media, you know that I have encouraged you to listen to the voices of Black leaders before ever considering my opinion on this. I’m writing today to my white friends, so this conversation can be out in the open. I do not want to be the white moderate with whom Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was “gravely disappointed” as he sat in a jail in Birmingham 57 years ago.

Listen.

Believe them.

Do not question their sanity.

Do not look for ways to justify injustice.

Afford Black people the same humanity that is afforded white people.

Apologize when you get this wrong.

Accept that they may be living a reality different than the one you experience in your white body.

Injustice that is hundreds of years in the making is not going to be fixed overnight. We cannot fix the past, but we can acknowledge that the past is not that far behind us. For all of us who have said, “I get it now,” let’s heed the words of Dr. Maya Angelou, prophetess and visionary: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

Racism in America: What White People Can Learn from the Pevensie Siblings