So the Supreme Court now says that rich white kids can't be forced to go to the same schools with poor black kids. Actually, what it said is that rich white kids are being harmed by being sent to schools with poor black kids, and that rich white kids shouldn't be harmed. Or maybe they said that poor black kids are being harmed by being forced to go to school with rich white kids. I dunno. I've skimmed the 182 pages of the decision (I know, I know) and by the end of it I'm pretty sure that anyone could take just about anything from parts of it.

Like it or not, there is a perception among most white people in this country that their nice, white kids will get picked on (or worse) if they attend a school where most of the kids are black or brown or anything but white. Fine, upstanding, liberal-type people I know have expressed this very fear to me.

They're justified, of course. 'Cause, you know, most of the black (or hispanic or whatever) kids who go to mostly-white schools get picked on. And if you're white and you go to school where you're a distinct minority, you're gonna get picked on. It happened to me.

Back in 1981, I was a member of the second class at Lincoln Academy in Kansas City. Lincoln Academy was the first magnet school in the city, and it was created to get some white kids in schools that were, before 1980, all black. In fact, the former Lincoln High School was the "colored" high school in K.C. before Brown v. Board of Education. I attended the former Lincoln Junior High, which was built on the site of the parking lot for the old Municipal Stadium, where the Chiefs and Royals first played. In any case, a quick sampling of my yearbook suggests that the school was about 75 percent black, 20 white and 5 percent hispanic. Those numbers are probably not exact, but close enough.

I got picked on because I was white, it's true. Kids called me names. I got a few shoves in the hall. Nothing worse than that, but I knew other white kids (who were "smart" enough to get in to Lincoln but dumb enough to call their classmates niggers) who got the holy living shit kicked out of them. Knives were involved in at least one case. Sad, but understandable. I mean, we were the interlopers. Lincoln elicited a certain sense of pride in the black community, and here were these honkies trying to take back what little they didn't have. And, you know, using the "n" word while they were at it.

So yeah, white kids might well get picked on at a "majority-minority" school. Tough shit. Everybody should get picked on at some time in their lives...it's a fine application of the "walk in somebody else's shoes" concept. I just don't see why the Supreme Court needs to protect those kids...oh wait, the white kids involved in the recent cases weren't going to schools where they'd be in the minority. They could still pick on black (and hispanic and...) kids all they want. So they're being protected from...what, exactly?

We, as a nation, have spent the last fifty years (or so) working very hard to make our schools better. Guess what? We have. But a lot of folks are falling through the cracks. Mostly, these kids come from families that don't place a premium on education. When no one in your family has finished high school, chances are you won't either. Your race or economic background aren't nearly as good predictors of your performance in school as the education level of your parents. If you know how to fix that problem, you'll win the Nobel Peace Prize.

It would be nice to live in a society where race is irrelevant. Among young people--those in their 20s and younger--it is, for the most part. But those kids are also much more class conscious than folks my age and certainly than folks my parents' age. Suburban neighborhoods, particularly in the south, are becoming more and more racially-integrated even as they are becoming more and more economically segregated.

A white girl moved in to Clovis when I was in high school. She was from South Carolina, the state with more black people (as a percentage) than any other state in the nation. She claimed (with pride, it seemed to me) that she had never even seen a black person until she was 12. I can't see how this was possible, but maybe she was telling the truth. I doubt that would be the case today, even in the whitest enclaves of South Carolina. But I think it is increasingly likely that many kids will go through their entire public school careers without encountering a student on free or reduced lunch. And that's a shame.

I had a close friend in grade school whose mother ODed near the end of our sixth grade year. He finished the semester, but as far as I know he never went to school again. I can't say his memory haunts me, but just knowing the circumstances of his life (and I knew only a few, though hearing them might well singe the eyebrows off some folks) has helped me to understand how lucky I was to have good parents who also happened to be competent people. I had other classmates whose moms were on welfare, something we managed somehow to avoid. I learned that people in bad situations aren't always bad people, and that society has an obligation to help those less fortunate--though I don't think we have the "how" figured out perfectly even now. Most of all, I learned that what matters is how you treat other people, not how they treat you.

So, yeah, I got picked on at Lincoln. That wasn't a good thing. It didn't make me stronger or a better person or anything. I didn't understand all the history at the time, but now that I do, the fact that I simply went about my business without anger or recrimination makes me feel good. My classmates (and they weren't tormentors; I wasn't bullied or anything) were kids stuck in a situation they didn't fully understand and certainly couldn't control. We were part of a grand (and noble) experiment. It didn't work perfectly, but it's always better to try and do the right thing than whine because you don't get what you want.

My guess is that the five guys on the Supreme Court who delivered this decision have a lot more sympathy for whiners than doers, especially if the whiners are white and rich.

Jon Worley has noticed that rich white folks have gotten some sweetheart deals from the legal system in the last couple of weeks. He'd like to remind them that payback is gonna be a bitch.