A 'Stolen' Education

Police in the Rochester, New York, suburb of Greece recently arrested, jailed and delivered in chains to a local courthouse a 33-year-old brown-skinned woman named Yolanda Miranda, also known as Yolanda Hill. A judge read the charge of grand larceny and set Hill's bail at $25,000. Her alleged crime? Using her mother's suburban address and enrolling her children in the Greece public schools while living about nine miles away in Rochester.

She told reporters outside the courthouse she was just trying to "get the best for my kids." Her teenage daughter, Santazcha, who sat in the front row at her mother's arraignment, added, "My mom only did what was right because she loved us. She's not a criminal."

In keeping with our purported "postracial" era, local commentators ignored the matters of race, class and inequality at the center of this case, framing it instead in the language of law and order. Woman Arrested in School Scam Appears in Court, read a headline in the Democrat and Chronicle. The paper even provided Greece's citizens a phone number to report other cases of suspected "larceny."

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