See, the grand jury that was convened to decide whether the police officer(s) who killed Eric Garner should be indicted concluded that there was no probable cause to seek an indictment. The grand jury that was convened to decide whether the police officer who killed Michael Brown should be indicted concluded that there was no probable cause to seek an indictment.

Yet one can only serve on a grand jury if one is a registered voter. Moreover, that registered voter can only serve on a grand jury if he or she sticks around long enough to serve on that jury and doesn't try to outsmart justice by giving silly-ass excuses to get off that jury -- like I did.

I didn't use the tools that were there. I let the Eric Garners and Michael Browns down.

Moreover, county prosecutors -- like Bob McCulloch, the prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County who essentially decided whether the St. Louis County grand jury would indict Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown -- are usually elected officials. They get voted in and out of office on the strength of the people who vote. In the 2014 primary for St. Louis County prosecutor, a black woman ran against McCulloch. Her name is Leslie Broadnax. Most importantly (to me!), she is a former public defender who may have come into contact with some of these police-brutality cases during her time as a defender. But she got far less than half the votes that McCulloch received: around 33,000 votes. Only 30 percent of the county turned out for that primary.

We're simply not using the tools that are there.

Racism is real, and black men get killed in tragically disparate numbers. Absolutely. It's been that way since the first interloper landed on this continent, and now many of us brown- and black-skinned people have even been infected with that racism disease against each other. That's deep. So it's going to take some time to remove that racism sickness out of America's DNA.