When I was fifteen, we moved from a bad part of town, to a really bad part of town. I was in a car filled with teenagers, and a cop pulled up behind us, and flashed his lights. Suddenly, everyone in the car was shoving drugs at me and telling me to hide them.

One cop came up to the driver's side and asked for the driver's identification, while the other cop came up to the passenger side and told us to get out of the car. We piled out of the car, and I said I needed to go to the bathroom. The cop pointed at the bowling alley behind us and told me to go and come right back. Once I was in the bathroom stall, I flushed everything down the toilet.

When I returned to the car, more cops had arrived and all five guys were spread out on the hoods of cars being searched. The cops found nothing and let us go - no ticket, nothing. They'd pulled us over because they could, and because, as you've probably guessed, everyone in our car was black or brown (except me).

I was furious, and told them I would never hide their effing drugs again, but my friends were just as angry with me, for flushing drugs down the toilet. While they knew the cops would never search a white girl, I didn't know that.

That one incident taught me how justice really worked in America. 50 years later, when I'm with people of color I still behave differently than I do when I'm with white people - and so do the cops, and other white people.