This week's episode of ABC's show "Black-ish" hit home on the reality that I, along with millions of people of color, must bear. I can remember the days sitting with my grandma, and her telling me lessons that I had to learn.

"Don't talk back to police."
"If they tell you to do something, do it. Even if you don't like it."
"It's better to listen and be embarrassed than to end up shot dead."

These words still ring in my ears and depict my interactions with law enforcement. My grandma, born in West Point, Miss., in the 30's, lived through Rodney King and Emmett Till, and did everything in her power to ensure that her grandson's life did not end the same way. She instilled the above words into me day after day to make sure that I never forgot them. Her words were the only tools by which I could combat the system. But she couldn't protect me. As a 10-year-old, I was exposed to my first taste of the criminal justice system.

I was walking home from my elementary school, Jose de Diego Community Academy. I had been kicking around an old sales paper when a man called me from across the street. In my third grader state of mind, I thought nothing of it. When I approached him, he grabbed my arm and flashed me his badge. Holding on tight, he told me he was a cop and that I was in trouble. That he was going to arrest me and take me to the police station, and started to push me towards his patrol car. Tears instantly welled up in my eyes as the fear of what my mother would do flashed through my mind. With tears flowing down my face, I begged him not to, and for reasons I can't explain, he let me go. I ran the rest of the way home as tears streamed down my face. To this day, I can't tell you why that officer singled me out, nor can I tell you what I did wrong.

I never told my grandma what happened that day. I was too afraid that I had done something wrong. TV shows taught me that police were there to help us and to catch the bad guys. They were the heroes and on that day, I was the bad guy. I had done something warranting the officer's actions.

It wasn't until I was much older that I could reflect upon that moment, and many more like it, to realize the flaws in our system. In my case, a police officer saw a black child walking home from school, calls him over, and proceeds to threaten him with an arrest. While mine only resulted in tears, there are many who weren't so lucky. A police officer in Cleveland shot dead 12-year-old Tamir Rice within seconds of arriving at the scene. A police officer in Chicago unloaded 16 bullets into Laquan McDonald and had to be ordered to stand down to prevent him from firing more rounds into the teen's body. A police officer killed 7-year-old Aiyana Jones in a house raid.

All of these cases, and many more throughout this country's history, revealed a glimpse into the everyday struggle as a person of color. Police brutality, discrimination by police officers, and a corrupted judicial system all work against us. It is an inescapable burden we must bear each and every day of our lives, no matter how we change our lives. It's this knowledge that each generation of Black people have passed down, a cheat sheet for dealing with law enforcement with hopes that it will give us a chance at survival.

It is for this reason that, even now in 2016, almost 400 years after my ancestors arrived in the United States, 150 years after my people were freed from slavery, 60 years after we were guaranteed equal rights within this country, I will still sit my niece and my future kids down and impart to them the same wisdom my grandma shared with me, because as Dre Johnson said, "Our children need to know that is the world that they live in."