My parents’ shared premium on education bonded them as graduate students at the University of Southern California in the 1990s. Two New Yorkers pursuing their master’s and doctorates, they saw school as the surest way to attain security. It was never a question that I was going to college. Hard work, I was taught, would ensure as many choices as possible.

That level of pressure was the norm in Montgomery County, Md., just outside Washington, D.C., where I grew up. It is one of the wealthiest and best-educated counties in the country. It is also largely segregated and fiercely competitive. I grew up surrounded by so much privilege it was possible for many residents to ignore race and class inequality entirely. After all, the nation’s first black president lived 12 miles away. So, despite the racial violence that was making headlines, my friends seemed to believe Montgomery County was post-racial.

“It’s sad but it’s a good thing we don’t have those problems here,” a classmate said the day after Trayvon Martin was murdered. It was clear to me, but not to many of my peers, that the community was still very much influenced by stereotypes and misconceptions about race. When I tried to talk to my classmates about that, they tended to be defensive.

Being one of the few black kids in my school was all I’d ever known before college. Having my hair teasingly prodded during recess or being called “oreo” felt normal. From 7 a.m. until 4 p.m., I learned to excuse small indignities, and I used humor as a defense mechanism. When I got home, I could finally vent to the few other people who understood. My mother was very clear: “Don’t let anyone touch your hair and you better not let them call you outside of your name.”

As I got older, I felt less and less like I belonged. When I started taking AP courses and showing up to the same college info sessions as many of my classmates, they made jokes about quotas and affirmative action, as if they hadn’t seen me studying right alongside them for years. One classmate even asked me to give up my spot on the morning announcements because “I didn’t need anything extra” for my college applications anyway.