Bringing together an interdisciplinary group of scholars and cultural workers, we engage the topic of Afro Asian alliance from a variety of perspectives, including: Afro Asian/Third World political history; theories of joint racialization; Buddhism and the African American community; Black/Asian portrayals in popular culture; musical and artistic exchanges; Black and Asian/American community interaction; interracial adoption; martial arts; and mixed raced identity. By including members already involved with Afro Asian projects in San Francisco and Oakland, we seek to bring our scholarship into conversation with community activism and artistic projects by attending local performances and collaborating with community workshops (such as youth meditation projects in Oakland). In examining these varied sites we are acutely aware of how race and gender intersect in their formations; for example in constructions of “Black” or “Asian” masculinity in martial arts, or in the feminized nature of “spirituality” or meditation (often constructed as a “passive act”). We also examine the constructions of class, sexuality, nation, and other identities within these alliances.