Chiming in with my anecdote. Took all honors classes throughout high school, so I pretty much never mixed with kids outside of that bubble. Was one of the few Asians in my high school in the small midwestern town, so I'm sure there was potential for bullying. But I wasn't bullied, and I credit some of that to the tiered class system.

This is one reason I'm up in arms about public school districts near me shutting down their gifted programs because they made certain not academically-inclined demographics feel bad about not being represented. So now, kids in my demographic get to feel bad about being bullied.