While I can't know the internal motivations of those involved, I would observe that neither the race nor the gender issues are necessary, in the Occam's Razor sense of the term [1]. The student suspended for chewing his poptart into a gun was a 7-year-old white boy. The student suspended for discussing shooting a Hello Kitty bubble gun was a 5-year-old white girl. Zero tolerance stupidity has been doled out across the board with no apparent regard for, well, anything, like sanity, let alone race or gender lines.
The 1995 Valedictorian of my high school lit off the hydrogen in the hydrolysis experiment, because, you know, it was there. Good thing he didn't pull that stunt today. Though I imagine that experiment has probably been long removed for creating dangerous quantities of explosives in the classroom.
[1] As a reminder, Occam's Razor is a heuristic, not a proof. Perhaps racism or sexism is involved, the lack of necessity is not a disproof of their presence, but the Razor suggests that aspect be cut away from your dominant hypothesis, pending future evidence requiring them in the explanation.
While I can't know the internal motivations of those involved, I would observe that neither the race nor the gender issues are necessary, in the Occam's Razor sense of the term [1]. The student suspended for chewing his poptart into a gun was a 7-year-old white boy. The student suspended for discussing shooting a Hello Kitty bubble gun was a 5-year-old white girl. Zero tolerance stupidity has been doled out across the board with no apparent regard for, well, anything, like sanity, let alone race or gender lines.
The 1995 Valedictorian of my high school lit off the hydrogen in the hydrolysis experiment, because, you know, it was there. Good thing he didn't pull that stunt today. Though I imagine that experiment has probably been long removed for creating dangerous quantities of explosives in the classroom.
[1] As a reminder, Occam's Razor is a heuristic, not a proof. Perhaps racism or sexism is involved, the lack of necessity is not a disproof of their presence, but the Razor suggests that aspect be cut away from your dominant hypothesis, pending future evidence requiring them in the explanation.