On Dec. 7, 2019, I — for the first time ever — was the talk of my high school. I became “the kid who got into Yale.” 

Most of my classmates gave me half-hearted congratulations with varying degrees of jealousy, celebration and animosity. To this day, I still remember one remark: 

“You only got in because of your race,” snarked a well-off, white kid in my calculus class. For anonymity’s sake, we’ll call him Brad.

It was the elephant in the room, a room of seven students and my instructor. I know a lot of Brad’s spite arose from him not getting into his dream school. At the same time, everyone knew deep down that I got in because of my race. Maybe not entirely, but at least partially, right? 

I played sports in high school and was in a bunch of different clubs. I had decent standardized test scores and perfect grades. I didn’t have a cool, prize-winning research project that my AP Computer Science instructor said I needed to get into Yale. I never won major awards for anything, most of the time not knowing the applications or competitions existed in the first place. I was certain, however, that this didn’t mean I was academically unqualified or that the admissions committee used race as a last resort to argue for my acceptance.

“I like to think that I got in because of my merit, not because of my race,” I replied rather cautiously without meeting Brad’s gaze. Because while part of the battle was trying to convince Brad of this dubious reality, the arguably more daunting part was convincing myself.

When I ultimately arrived at Yale, the battle of convincing myself that I belonged became a more tangible struggle. I failed my first exam within the first few weeks of enrollment. I was in a math class with mostly affluent, white people who had been surrounded by higher-level math their entire life; meanwhile, I struggled day and night to understand core concepts. I had never read more than 10 pages for an English class in high school, and suddenly I was tasked with 50 at once in my first-year seminar. I took my shot at a cappella and theater scenes, auditioning against people who had won performance awards and years of experience. If not a decade and a half of prior training, at least they had robust arts programs in high school. My school choir’s arrangements were confined to a “boy” part and a “girl” part, and theater didn’t exist. 

This is not to say I’m not cognizant or proud of my accomplishments before and during my time at Yale. I’ve grown immensely as an academic, musician, artist, actor and person in my time here. But the fact of the matter is that once people like me infiltrate spaces like Yale — spaces that weren’t made to include us — the clawing doesn’t stop. It continues, and it feels all too familiar.

What the Supreme Court’s striking down of affirmative action does is make our fight harder, as if it wasn’t already hard enough. I’m still fighting.

People who are opposed to affirmative action often believe that race-conscious admissions mean undeserving, unqualified people of color can get into selective schools by taking the spots of hard-working, and more deserving, students who understand what it takes to thrive at an elite institution like Yale.

Those people often have it backward. People of color, specifically those of us who are first-generation and low-income, fight to the point of physical exhaustion to infiltrate such spaces. On the other hand, wealthy — and usually white — applicants can comfortably put their faith in daddy’s checkbook; legacy — and usually white — admits can put their faith in mommy’s college education. 

I bring up my underfunded high school and my poor background not in an attempt to conflate race and class but in recognition of the fact that classist, racist and other prejudiced structures shape each other and work in tandem. What confuses me the most about the Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action is its attempt to isolate and remove only race-based consideration in admissions when race in the United States does not operate in isolation from other social categories. 

The histories of different racial groups are shaped by registers of class, gender and disability, to name a few. When we try to examine race alone, we end up looking at tons of other categories that are inherently tied to race — which means we were never initially looking at just race. I’m afraid that this ruling will compel lawmakers to weaponize the same intersectional frameworks that elucidate the imbrications between race and other social categories against multiply marginalized communities like mine. 

I feel and fear for the next student like me, who grew up not really knowing anything about Yale, or any school that society deems prestigious, besides it being out of reach. Because while I know I bring a lot to the table on the basis of my intellectual, artistic and personal merit, I know my race is deeply entrenched in all of these. Because Yale admissions officers not being able to consider my race in their review process would not only have been an oversight in contextualizing the experiences that my application described but also a missed opportunity to paint the full picture of who they were admitting.

If I were to go back to that high school calculus class, I would probably tell Brad that he was, in part, correct. I’m glad whoever read my college application saw how important every part of my experience was to me — including my race. 

At least he won’t know what to say to the next poor person of color who gets into Yale.

Gabby Montuori is a senior in Timothy Dwight College. Contact them at gabby.montuori@yale.edu.

Correction, June 29: A previous version of this piece noted an incorrect date. The author submitted an update accordingly.