By Cassady Brockman 

LEXINGTON, Ky – Andrew Chan has taken the topic of civil rights in the United States and focused his attention on the interaction between two minoritized groups: Black Americans and Asian-Americans. 

“We’re trying to reconceptualize a lot of connections between African Americans and Asian Americans,” said Chan, who’s a history major in the University of Kentucky’s College of Arts and Sciences. 

According to Chan, this newly developed intersectional field “relies on the idea that there’s a lot of overlap between African American History and Asian American history.”  

The intersectionality Chan studies led him to present at the 64th annual meeting of the Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies at UK in late January. He presented a paper on the Red Guard Party, a San Francisco-based political group that the Black Panthers mentored. He also presented at the annual History Graduate Conference at Texas A&M University. 

“There was a lot of solidarity at that time,” he said. “Reconceptualizing the solidarity within the Civil Rights era helps combat the racial division that has existed between discriminated racial communities. 

He has a personal connection to the Stop Asian Hate movement, being Asian American himself. During COVID Chan said he noted an upsurge in racial slurs as well as racially pejorative jokes. Chan said he wants to cultivate better multiracial solidarity to fight racial divisions in America. 

“A lot of Asian Americans took place in a bunch of civil rights movement and in the black power movement,” said Chan said. “But it goes further than that.”  

Chan, a California native, said his interest in this topic stems from his own Chinese American and Mexican heritage, which led to his interest interracial connections. He moved to Lexington during his senior year of high school after his father began working at UK.  

Chan attended Bluegrass Community and Technical College before transferring to UK. He said he was unsure of what he wanted to pursue, originally thinking that sports photography would be the right path for him because of his passion for basketball. He said, however, that when his classes started,, he discovered he enjoyed writing. 

Other than his studies, Chan enjoys music as well as playing and watching basketball; he covers the walls of his room with albums and basketball posters. He enjoys hip-hop, R&B and some older rock stars including George Harrison. Also, he’s taking a class in Indonesian gamelan as well as Korean percussion. He said the classes give him an outlet until he is able to buy a drum set of his own. 

“Hi-hop is definitely my favorite genre," he said “I love deep diving and exploring music rabbit holes within this genre. My favorite artists are probably Kendrick Lamar, Wu Tang Clan and Tyler the Creator.”