Gene and Scott talk with Bill Flores, a political science professor who has put together a pioneering Texas government textbook that focuses on student involvement. As we dissect the evolving political landscape of Texas, Bill's insights into the burgeoning Latino vote shine a light on the potential for seismic shifts in state politics as a newly empowered generation gets ready to leave their indelible mark on history.
The Texas Experiment: Politics, Power, and Social Transformation (Sage, 2023) https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/the-texas-experiment/book276276
Gene and Scott talk with Bill Flores, a political science professor who has put together a pioneering Texas government textbook that focuses on student involvement. As we dissect the evolving political landscape of Texas, Bill's insights into the burgeoning Latino vote shine a light on the potential for seismic shifts in state politics as a newly empowered generation gets ready to leave their indelible mark on history.
The Texas Experiment: Politics, Power, and Social Transformation (Sage, 2023) https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/the-texas-experiment/book276276
This podcast is not sponsored by. It does not reflect the views of the institutions that employ us. It is solely our thoughts and ideas, based upon our professional training and study of the past.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Talking Texas History, the podcast that explores Texas history before and beyond the Alamo. Not only will we talk Texas history, we'll visit with folks who teach it, write it, support it, and with some who've made it and, of course, all of us who live it and love it. Welcome to another edition of Talking Texas History. I'm Gene Crois.
Speaker 1:I'm Scott Sosman, gene, one of the best things that we get on this podcast. We get to talk to distinguished scholars and people who work in all kinds of areas, and we have another one here, an author and a scholar, so why don't you introduce our guest to everybody?
Speaker 2:Well, I've got to say this is a good friend of mine and we've been friends for a long time former boss and now colleague and his name is Bill Flores. Bill, welcome to Talking Texas History.
Speaker 3:My pleasure. Glad to be here.
Speaker 2:So today we want to talk a little bit about a project that you're working on. But before we get into that, bill, would you tell people a little bit about yourself? A lot of our listeners are our colleague historians. You're not a historian, but you've been very active for a long time in Chicano politics and political studies. So tell the people a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 3:Yes, I was born in California, in San Diego, and I guess the first time that I got involved in anything politically I was probably about 15, 16 years old, maybe a little younger. You know, my dad was a veteran of World War II and he actually, you know, had a purple heart and a broad star for his service and a favorite. He came home and found discrimination. It was difficult to get a loan. It's difficult to buy a house. My mother and my father grew up in segregated schools. If you ever go to San Diego there's the old town San Diego. It's like many things they basically recreated, sort of what the old town would have looked like. Well, they do have a school there and that was a school my dad attended but they don't have is the sign saying it was a segregated Mexican only school, because that's the way it worked. My mom there's a documentary that PBS made on. It's called the Lemon Grove Incident and she actually went to the school that later split and then they had a Mexican only school that was basically in a barn. So you know, that's the reality that many people faced in Texas, california and elsewhere. And when I was in my early teens we saw that we felt discrimination several times and there was a law that was passed. But it took a lot of community effort basically to stop the discrimination and I think that's the reason why we're so much more involved in this Basically to stop the discrimination in housing, and this was before federal legislation, and so California passed that law. There was a referendum to pass it and my parents got involved.
Speaker 3:My aunt, who was very involved in politics in Los Angeles. She urged us to participate and so I started going around neighborhoods and stores to get signature site. That was my first really thought about politics. I didn't know anything about the political system, I just was doing it because my parents were, and we had grown up as a family that was not really not in poverty but lower middle class and did what we could for others. We went to church every week. Every Sunday we gather food, we put together packages to give to people that were less fortunate than ourselves, and so I learned a lot about that. There were always people that were poorer than us and I wondered why, and so when I went to college, that was always behind my head. I wasn't a major in politics, I was a major, actually, in healthcare. I was going to be a doctor, partly because I wanted to serve underserved communities.
Speaker 3:Anyway, I ended up getting involved in local politics in Los Angeles. My first book when I was part of a still an undergraduate I was part of a research team and we wrote a book about the politics of the non incorporated Los Angeles and the and all the different communities.
Speaker 2:Somewhere. That was when you were an undergraduate.
Speaker 3:Yes, I came out when I was in the my master, as I was working on my master's degree at Stanford.
Speaker 1:Well, dr Forrest, you know you've done a lot of things in your academic career and you talked about getting started as an undergraduate, but you didn't tell us you rose to a pinnacle as an academic career. So why don't you tell us a little bit about your career as an academic and what you've done and what positions you've held?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I, you know I ended up getting going into a doctoral program at Stanford. I didn't go to. I mean, I went into the doctoral program and with the intention of getting a PhD in political science. There was some struggles in the political science department Because of conflicts that take place in an academic disciplines. I ended up leaving. I and several other students ended up leaving the program for a while and I worked in nonprofits. I did a lot of consulting work for a while and I ran a couple nonprofits and then, after running a health center, I decided to go back and get my PhD. And you know the clock was ticking. You have 10 years to get a PhD. I asked for the extension Just before that clock ended.
Speaker 3:Anyway, I got my PhD in at Stanford in a combination of political science and public policy, and so my PhD is in social theory and public policy, I read. I worked at a center, a research center, the Center for Chicano Research at Stanford, and I ran some research programs. Then I went to Fresno State. Actually, as before that, I was teaching at a Catholic University. Over time I began not only doing research that was, community action oriented but in addition being an administrator, I became an assistant dean at Fresno State. I'd run a research center there as well and then I became dean at Cal State, Northridge Provost at New Mexico State. I was Secretary, Deputy Secretary for Higher Education for the State of New Mexico and then and then President at the University of Houston downtown, and since then I've been at Antioch University and back at UHD teaching political science nonprofit management and Russia.
Speaker 1:Houston drew you back in and I was spend time at Fresno. That means you and I and Gene actually had something in common there, because I have a friend of mine that he's from California, he's from the Bay Area, so he's biased and he told me. He said you know what Fresno is? The love of California.
Speaker 2:Is that a compliment?
Speaker 3:I don't know, california has a huge agricultural area in the Central Valley and some of it is very conservative. I did a lot of research on water rights and also on pesticides and the influence of the floating pesticides into the air and into the land and water, and the communities that were affected by them tried to do work that would help those.
Speaker 1:People don't understand California. Is you know they what they think of California they actually only know about? You know 2% of the state of California and I think it's all like that, don't they? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Bill. So one of the things that I want to talk about today and the reason we asked you to be on the show you got a new political science government textbook for college classes and it's called the Texas Experiment Politics, power and Social Transformation. It's published by CQ Press, which is Sage Publications, one of their imprints. So tell us a little bit about why you thought Texas needed another government textbook.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, there are plenty of government textbooks and some of them are very good. Each has a lot of strengths and some weaknesses.
Speaker 3:But you know, I hadn't taught Texas politics. I was getting my syllabus together in my course, but I had been teaching American politics at UHD for a while, and so I asked students who were taking the American Politics course if they had taken the Texas Politics course. I really wanted their reaction and some of them just said, oh, that course, you know, it's awful, it's boring. We've studied government in high school. Why do we have to take this course? And then I'd ask well, what do you think about the textbook? Same thing it's boring. And so, okay. Well, what makes it boring? What doesn't talk about anything useful and it makes us feel less powerful or less able to do anything. And so you know, with that in mind, I began building a course that would really address the issues but get students engaged early on, including having them find out who represents them, going to local meetings, any of a number of activities that are right.
Speaker 3:From the beginning, they could begin to understand that they have some power, even though they may feel it's just one vote. There are many elections in the country that one vote is all it takes, and in fact there have been cases in Texas where the ultimate person who was elected the city council or mayor. It was a flip of a coin because they'd hold two or three elections and it'd be tied over and over again if they had small populations. So one vote does make a difference, and it was that experience, and also because Sage contacted me to do a review of a book that they were doing, and I started to do that and they said we love the way you write and we've read a net couple of one of the other books that you wrote just recently on democracy and America in American civic engagement, and we'd like you to write a book on Texas. And so that's how the project began.
Speaker 1:Well, that's amazing when you talk about politics in Texas too, and as a someone who studies politics and now it's politics in Texas, let me ask you a question about maybe the future or what's gonna happen in Texas politics. What's your take on it? Particularly the Latino vote in Texas. That's gonna be the big difference in this state going forward. They're now a plurality in the state, and I think both political parties are going to at least make the attempts to compete for Latino votes. So how do you see Texas politics? Let's say, if you had a crystal ball, in years from now let's 20, you know, 34, is Texas politics going to continue on the same arc that it is now? Is there gonna be a sea change? What's gonna happen?
Speaker 3:Well, that was one of the questions that would come up in my courses, and so I thought it was important in the 13th chapter of the book and, by the way, gene has written the first chapter on Texas history, and so he's a part of the project, and I wanna thank Eugene for those contributions but one of the things that students would ask is what is the future gonna look like? So actually, I started the book about thinking about what is the future going to look like and, as a matter of fact, when we were writing it, it was in the middle of some of the elections, and so we begin to see that, first of all, the no community is actually homogeneous. Not all whites vote the same way, not all blacks vote the same way and not all Latinos vote the same way, but the Latino population is very diverse. It's like the Asian population. We tend to say Asians and then we lump everybody in it, whether they came from Pakistan or China or the Philippines or whatever else. Reality of it is is people have different historical experiences. Those that were born here and lived here for a long time may have different views than if they came from Fiddlewell or from Venezuela, and also class background makes a difference. If they came here and faced discrimination, and maybe their parents faced discrimination, they'll have a different political outlook than those who may have come from the South American country and very, very wealthy, so you have to take that into consideration. Not everybody's going to vote the same, however. We have a very uneven distribution of wealth in this country and it is state.
Speaker 3:Texas likes to say it's the center of economic development. Well, that's not always true. It's. Certainly we have had a lot of people move here from other states, but I think the Latino population it's growing, it's younger, it has real needs for education, for healthcare. This Texas as a state ranks 45th in the nation in a lot of and in some cases 48th in such areas of healthcare, child welfare, many other things. When you look at the proportion of children without insurance, texas is one of the worst, and the Latino population is even worse than that in terms of the percentage of Latinos that don't have health insurance.
Speaker 3:When you look at public education the kids that are going to schools that are dilapidated, deteriorated, that don't have equipment in their laboratories, things like that they tend to be Latino and black, and so we're going into a situation that's not a good thing for the state, where the future of the population that is going to be the majority of the state and is already the plurality of it are not getting the education or the healthcare or the housing or the other things that they should and, as a consequence, people vote very much based on their interests. You're going to see the state become more purple and probably, down the road, more blue Democracy. The change in democracy is not destiny, but it certainly pushes a lot and influences how people will, and I think that our current leaders in the state are very worried. They're worried about losing power and you see them grabbing it and holding onto it as fiercely as they can. Redistricting, reapportioning, passing laws to restrict voting. Long term, that's better people, that's a great answer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is a great answer and I mean I think you're right. All of that are Topics and you cover in the book and you know, you and I and Scott, we've all written books, we're all professors. A lot of times people say you know, you professor should not be Assigning books that you wrote because of ethical reasons or something. What do you say when people criticize academics for assigning their own book?
Speaker 3:I just felt that a lot of the books Really we're not dealing with issues that students wanted to hear and we're asking me about. And so you know, I think when any of us Teach a course, we bring in and build the course based not only on the requirements that the department sets but also on on based on our strengths and based on the, the issues that are important to us. And so when you do that, you become an expert in that area and you know you figure, well, I'll arrange the book differently. That that I've been using or I'll focus on and I'll bring in supplemental. And after a while you bring in so many supplemental things, you figure I might as well write a book.
Speaker 3:I've doing that right now to book, because I've been teaching strategic planning for a while and I use different books and then neither one of which I'm really that happy about. So I'm writing a book for nonprofits as well as for students on that. It will be called non-profit management hitting your target, moving your nonprofit from where you are to where you want to be. And again, that's not because I'm interested in making money.
Speaker 1:You know Lots of lots of hours.
Speaker 3:So A project for, for you know, selling mysteries, you know it's a project for love of Of your subject, but also because you want to try and share a perspective that they will help and that students will respond to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have a lot of listeners that are educational professionals and Professors, and then Jean and I someone I've been a co-author part of an American history textbook. I also assigned that textbook, by the way and also Jean and I are currently putting together a Texas history textbook or at least we're supposed to be. We're not working in it is Should be. But as someone who's done this, why don't you share with us what do you think's the biggest challenge for putting a textbook together and what should authors or other textbooks think about before they take on that job?
Speaker 3:Well, you have to understand that it's a negotiation process. First, you know, you may have an image of what you're going to do and in a book and the publisher has another image and it's a negotiation with them and also they edit too and and they're they're thinking about the market because they want to sell as many textbooks as possible, but also they bring up always Good points about. You know I'll have you thought about this, or you know here's something you might consider. In you, ultimately, you're the author and you make decisions based on what you think. All right, but they also understand that's that sometimes you know you need things you haven't thought about, like discussion questions, learning outcomes. You know Out of points that they can be used for the book when faculty lecture, all of those kinds of things. So it there's a lot involved in writing a book and you go through many, many drafts and redrafts Before you have a final chapter of it you know, then gets published and you work on selecting.
Speaker 3:You know, just like building the graphs yourself or charts yourself, I'm working with someone to do that, picking the the photographs from from A company that they have a contract with, etc. So don't just write it and think, oh, I'm gonna get rich because that's not the purpose. The other is no, it's, it's going to take time, you know. And the other thing is, when you deal with a publisher, it's hurry up in a way. You send one thing and a month goes by and you haven't heard anything, sometimes two months, and then suddenly okay, well, here's, here's our edits, and can you get this done by Tuesday? You know it's monday, well, tuesday of next week will be okay, but you know, and usually that's right in the middle of midterms, of finals and the papers, or two or something.
Speaker 3:So these are the kinds of things that you have to understand. It's a balance between what you want to do and what the publisher needs, and also you're trying to balance it with with the other demands of teaching, the other courses you have in grading papers and the main thing that we do as not.
Speaker 2:So, bill, since you know you were talking at the beginning about your career in California and whatnot in new mexico, so when you came to texas and you're teaching these texas political science courses, is there something about texas politics that you have found Interesting? And the other question is what do students find most interesting? That that surprises them?
Speaker 3:Well, I think Texas is interesting in many different ways, not just because it is a more conservative state. I think that's true across the electorate. Certainly it's more conservative than California, but California has very conservative elements as well. Same thing in New York. I didn't mention that. I was a senior fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation for a while.
Speaker 3:But one of the things that happens is that, because of the nature of both California and Texas, one party is in charge of triumvirate. They have the governor, they have the head of the Senate and they control the House. And when you have that, you're able to pass any legislation. Well, the problem is that if you don't have a check on it, then what happens is the extremes start coming in the plot and you see that sometimes in California on the left, you see that sometimes in Texas on the right. Certainly a lot in Texas right now, and that's a very conservative element, particularly those pushing for more support for private schools and parochial schools, say, with vouchers. So, based on the culture and based on the political climate, you get very different states, very different bills that they pass. In California, new York, they tend to pass things that like taxation and also more education. They also very interested in climate change. Here in Texas, the view of those in power is there is no climate change or if there is, we can't do anything about it anyway. So let's you know. And, more importantly, jobs matter more than people sell. So you know, let's make sure we have jobs, even if it means somebody down right next to that plant is suffering and high cancer. And I'm not being facetious here. You know we get extremes and I think that that's one of the hardest things for students, because they feel that their voice is not being heard, that they can't do anything to change the system.
Speaker 3:Texas doesn't have a referendum. You know, you cannot get something on the ballot by, as you can in California or in New York with a petition, and, as a consequence, you have to go to your legislator, and your legislator may be in the, in the party that doesn't have power. People just feel and right now cities are for the most part controlled by Democrats to say, legislative, the governor, the current general, are we all Republicans and so they are passing legislation that is really restricting the ability of those like the mayors and the and the judges to enact the measures that that are healthy for for their community, and that's a difficult situation. You know, if you look to the future, 80%, well, 74% of the entire state's population will be in the triangle, the urban triangle, and you know that's Houston, dallas, san Antonio. You know all that area 80%. It's amazing. Yeah, we're all the power.
Speaker 1:It's amazing and you say extremes and I think that you know that's such a pression statement because just here in town, in Nacogdoches, is a small city, it's a rural area Republicans dominate things. Right now we are having a vicious, vicious election fight in the Republican primary for our house seat because and it's all in it basically it's this run to see who can be most to the right in this in our, in our current house speaker, I know and I like he's being challenged by a challenger and his challenger accuses him of being a Marxist, leftist and it's all this. I mean it's vitriolic and it's airing people apart. It's utterly. Texas politics has always been a full context, sport in the arena, but it seems to be continuing and maybe getting worse, maybe because the stakes are higher. I don't know that. That that could be.
Speaker 1:When you look in the future about that. You know students. You say students and young people when they come and that's one of the things in your classes and we're all teaching young people. When you have young people in your classes that you're teaching, and when you teach them about politics, we talk about politics and you alluded to some of this. Tell us, tell our audience about, what students find the biggest surprises about your textbook and in your classes. What surprises them? Maybe they do something they don't know.
Speaker 3:Well, I think what surprises them is that they're so loot, their legislation is constantly being passed, or decisions that are made without public input, or that when public input takes place, it's ignored. Text dot is infamous for that. You know they're going to build a freeway and doesn't matter what communities they make it on. That tends to be poor and minority communities, but so is you know.
Speaker 3:You have situated the CCQ. You know the environmental quality commission or the railroad commission, the same thing public utilities commission. They enact legislation that is favorable to companies and sometimes they pass rules basically making it impossible for people to even have a public hearing, and unfortunately, that really surprises students, but it also makes them angry and they want to do something about it, especially if they live in those neighborhoods where they've seen for years, just, you know, terrible things going on in terms of, you know, environmental impact. Sometimes their family members or neighbors have cancer, leukemia, or you know a child was born, you know, with some kind of defect because of the environmental impact that has been created and rules and laws ignored. I think that's the biggest surprise.
Speaker 1:That's right and it's you know, we all do this. We all see students, and we've all done this for a long time. I'm seeing students I think you hit on something really good. They're seeing and they're angry. I'm seeing students now more attuned to being activists yes, and I did in 15 years ago and they're wanting to go out and do things like that. So so, yeah, I think we may have some surprises coming up, absolutely.
Speaker 3:That's, by the way, why we have in every chapter what you can do at the end of the chapter, because you don't want students just to be frustrated or feel disempowered, but to have a pathway so they know what they can do to make a difference.
Speaker 2:Bill, I've got something on this show. We like to ask our guests what do you know? And so Bill Flores, what do you know?
Speaker 3:I'll tell you that one thing that I know is that all changes started with just a small group of people and who have said, oh no, we're going to do something about it. And I encourage students to not just get angry or not just put a post on your social media site, but to actually get involved, because they're the future of this state. And I tell you, when you think about it, in 2050, maybe you're 22 right now Well, just think you're going to be in your late 40s or 50s. In the next few decades, you're going to have own a house, you're going to have children, maybe even grandchildren. Is that? What future do you want for your children and your grandchildren? Because you're the ones that are going to make that future. So don't sit on the sidelines and vote, but don't just vote. Make change.
Speaker 1:I hope they take that message to heart. This has been great, bill. We could sit here and talk about all these things forever because it's a great conversation. Well, thank you for being here. I get to Houston quite often. Next time I get down there, what we'll do? We'll all get together, we'll go out to eat and we'll make Jean pay. How about that? That'd be wonderful Look forward to it. It's been telling everybody that I'm spending Jean's money here the last week or two, like you would have later.
Speaker 2:So all the residuals from that book, right?
Speaker 1:That's right. Maybe we can buy a drink with it. That's right. That's right. But thank you very much.
Speaker 3:It's been very informative and I'm going to be one of our better episodes.
Speaker 1:I can tell you right now. Well, thank you so much. It has been a pleasure, bill, thank you very much. Thank you very much. All right, bye. Thank you for being here, lisa.