Introduction

Abstract This essay serves three critical functions. First, it provides a brief historical summarization of the circumstances that have precipitated a reinvigorated and refocused engagement and even intersectionality between Black studies (or, as it is more commonly known today, Africana or African American studies), Asian American studies, and Asian studies. Second, in at least a preliminary way, it introduces the methodological approaches and thematic objectives of the four essays that form the foundation of this forum. Third, without pretensions to predictiveness, this essay concludes with deliberation on what is likely to come, by offering conjectural prognoses regarding the potential future content and contours of allyship not merely between Black studies and Asian American studies but also between the former and Asian studies, by asking—particularly in the latter case—the crucial question whether an authentic alliance of mutual cooperation is forthcoming or whether the quality of any relationship is destined to remain foreseeably something somewhat less substantive than its potential suggests is really possible.