It’s 9:30 on a Thursday morning, and the students inside Room 327 at Denver’s East High School are supposed to be watching a documentary about World War II. Class is almost over, though, so even when the teacher pauses the video to ask a question about the United States’ international trade policy during the conflict, most of the teenagers in the Advanced Placement (AP) U.S. history class continue preparing for next period’s precalculus quiz. The clicking of fingers on graphing calculators fills the room.
When the bell chimes, one AP class replaces another inside Room 327. Harlem Porter finds an open desk in the back and opens their laptop. Like their peers in the AP African diaspora seminar, Porter is working on a long-term research paper that will decide whether they pass or fail the course. “I’m looking at how Eurocentrism has affected the sexuality of Africans through the cosmology of two separate tribes: the Igbo and
