This article addresses how students of color experience negation through world history, and exclusion from being recognized as fully human. What are the logics of exclusion within a world history classroom, and how do these logics of exclusion reproduce themselves in student experiences of alienation and exclusion from the curricular narrative? This study draws from interviews with 10th grade global studies students of color, and employs critical theory, critical race theory, critical disability studies, and queer studies, to conduct a different reading of these students. These frameworks redirect our gaze to the exclusionary logics of reason, the politicized construction of history as a discipline, and the impact of distinctions between being and non-being, civilized and savage, in world history. The article intervenes into these moments when teachers dismiss what students say, to understand the impacts history has on how students understand themselves, and how history has engaged students.