From residential segregation to poverty and policing, social and economic inequality shape enormous parts of people’s lives. Yet, we like to think that there exist egalitarian spaces where typical social divisions don’t apply or can be mitigated, such as churches, public schools, and civic organizations. But do people of different backgrounds who enter these spaces really find themselves on equal footing with one another?

A new study by incoming visiting scholar Andrea Voyer (University of Connecticut), supported by RSF and published in the latest issue of Public Culture, explores how race, social class, gender, and immigration status structure interpersonal interactions between parents of students attending a Manhattan school, “PS X.” Though once a struggling school, PS X exists in a gentrified neighborhood and currently serves a mix of wealthy and low-income families. Although most students from high-income families are part of PS X’s accelerated track, which is largely separated from the rest of the school, there is only one PTA for the entire school. Voyer notes, “Outside of school-related activities, PS X parents coming from economically disparate worlds are unlikely to meet, but inside the PTA, parents ostensibly have an equal voice in educational matters and an equal stake in their children’s education.”

In her study, Voyer observed PS X parents at a PTA bake sale, and found that although all parents and students were invited to participate, hierarchies based on existing social inequalities nevertheless emerged. The organizers of the bake sale were wealthy parents who had the time and the means to set up the event, and they often asserted their authority and status against lower-status parents. For example, the organizers behaved brusquely toward an African American mother whom they were not already acquainted with, and ridiculed baked goods contributed by an Asian immigrant mother who spoke poor English once she had left. Voyer concluded, “I find that even when civility prevails, background inequalities on the basis of race, gender, social class, and immigration status are often reproduced in mundane everyday interaction.”

Voyer will continue her research on the dynamics of everyday inequality in democratic spaces during her time in residence at RSF.

Read the full report from Public Culture journal.