The beginning of Home Alone 2 offers us an excellent example of a well-handled confession on the part of Kevin's older brother, Buzz.
Let us now move to a scenario inspired by Bill Cosby. Imagine two students caught smoking in the bathroom. Both students are brought before the school administrator and asked to confess and apologize. It would seem that, as the students have both committed the exact same action, they should receive the same punishment with the confessional and apology being mere incidental parts of the story. In truth, the response of the student to being caught is actually more important than the infraction itself. As such, even minor differences in how students respond to being caught will have a greater effect on how they are punished than even their actual deeds.
As we have seen with the case of Kevin and Buzz, when someone commits an infraction there are two wrongs committed. There is the action itself (whether fighting during a public recital, smoking in the bathroom or first-degree homicide) and then there is the challenge to the legitimacy of the social unit (whether the family or larger units such as a school or even a country). The implication here is that the transgressor does not accept the right of the social unit to impose obligations. Since societies tend to rely more on the soft power of people not being able to even conceive of rebellion in order to function than on actual coercion, the belief that one is allowed to break the rules is an even graver threat than the actual rule-breaking itself. This is one of the reasons why it is so important for courts to get defendants to plead guilty. The convict who admits that they were wrong and throws themselves at the mercy of the court, affirms the court's and, by extension, society's legitimate authority to punish. The crime that initially struck at the authority of society now comes to strengthen that authority.
What happens when one of the students has a better instinctual understanding of the social theory of crime and punishment particulary as applied to white middle class people perhaps because they are themselves white middle class kids? As such, they are able to assume the proper contrite pose and tone that the white middle class administrators expect. Now, what if the other student is an inner society black kid who lacks the training to handle white middle class administrators? (Alternatively, what if the student is on the autism spectrum and struggles, in general to strike the right tone with neurotypicals?)
If the white middle class kid gets away with a slap on the wrist and the poor black kid gets the book thrown at him, is that racism? the skin color of the students would not offer decisive proof as the school could point to a subtle but real distinction in how the students behaved. Furthermore, the fact that we are dealing with subtlties traps us into having to give the administration a lot of leeway to call things as they instictually see fit. To say that administrators should not be attempting to force middle class "white" values on students and to do so is racism is also far from obvious as the administrators can argue that part of their job is to teach students to function within a society run by middle class white people. Even if we disagree with them, the fact that they sincerely believe this and see themselves acting for the benefit of the black students makes it rather difficult to say that they are racists.
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