My earliest memory of lobbying was during the summer before 4th grade.

(I didn’t know that’s what it was called until I was probably 23. I had no idea you could make a career out of telling people your opinion and what you thought they should do.)

My parents took me with them to Congressman Les Aspin’s annual picnic, and during the drive down, discussed their disappointment in a recent vote he’d made, against funding school busing for the purposes of desegregation.

After the swimming, but before the hot dogs, they introduced me to Congressman Aspin, and I told him in no uncertain terms that I took the bus to school and I liked it and I thought the government should pay for it.

I didn’t know, or say anything about desegregation, but in retrospect, there is no doubt in my mind that he knew my parents kept me in the Milwaukee Public Schools. This whole conversation took place after the first year of court-ordered desgregation there.

Milwaukee did some wonderful educational experiments as a result of having to desegregate schools — I’ve talked before about my high school experience. Instead of just shipping kids from neighborhood A to neighborhood B, they created a series of magnet schools all over the city, and drew in kids from throughout the city.

I went from walking 8 or 9 blocks (and being bullied) to spending 40 minutes reading on the bus — a huge improvement in my opinion. It was only later that I realized what a risk and commitment my parents took — they’d moved to the best neighborhood school district in the city in time for me to start kindergarten, and moved me out of that school when the call for desgregation came. When I was beginning 3rd grade.

My new school didn’t follow traditional grades, but regularly tested students and put kids with similar abilities in small groups to study — so I had reading upstairs with the 5th graders, math with different groups between 3rd and 4th grade over the year, and science with other 3rd graders.

A few years later, my sister went to a different magnet school where all of her classes were taught in German — until 3rd grade when testing pressures caused them to add in an hour of English grammar per day.

That’s why today’s news that the new Robert’s Supreme Court decision (pdf) that school districts mostly can’t use race to promote integration, unless they are repairing an explicit policy of racial discrimination, makes me so sad.

I admit, I have not yet waded through all 185 pages. I scanned the main decision, couldn’t even stand to read Thomas’ concurrence, read the very short Stevens dissent, and got about 15 pages through the Breyer dissent before I realized I want to finish this post and I have about 10 more minutes before I fall asleep no mater what.

So let me just say that Breyer is my new hero, but the very best, most succinct quotation from the entire matter is from the Stevens dissent (internal citations mostly deleted):

There is a cruel irony in THE CHIEF JUSTICE’s reliance on our decision in Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294 (1955). The first sentence in the concluding paragraph of his opinion states: “Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin.” This sentence reminds me of Anatole France’s observation: “[T]he majestic equality of the law, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”

Thank you, Justice Stevens. Well said.