Ep. 37 – What is Proyecto Latino: Politics & Policy at UT?

[00:00:43] Angie: Hi everybody. My name is Dr. Angie Gutierrez and I am an incoming Assistant Professor at UT Austin in the, Mexican American Latino Latina Studies department. And I’m here today with one of our fabulous professors, and she’s gonna introduce herself.

[00:01:00] Angela: Hi, Angie. It’s so good to be here. My name is Dr. Angela Campo, and I am an Assistant Professor at the Department of Mexican American and Latina/ Latino Studies at UT Austin. And I am thrilled to be here to talk a little bit about some of the work that we’ve been doing, and excited that you are joining us. Angie, we’re thrilled to have you and I’m really excited to be working with you and Dr. Danielle Cleland on this project and other ventures that we’ve been thinking about in terms of understanding the Latino community in Texas and nationwide.

[00:01:36] Angie: Yeah. Thank you so much. I’m really excited to be working with y’all. So I’ve been in the department for the last two years. I’ve gotten to know you and, Professor Cleveland for quite some time now.

So it’s really excited to get into this role and get on the ground running. So when you joined UT last year, you started Proyecto Latino, and I wanna just give people a sense what it is and what we’re doing and what the project is about. So do you wanna talk a little bit about what your vision was when you started Proyecto Latino?

Sure.

[00:02:13] Angela: Yeah. The first thing about our collaborative research project is that it’s called Proyecto Latino: Politics and Policy at UT and its focus is really, to try to better understand the Texas Latino community and its most pressing issues. So it’s a very much a collaborative project and team and effort that focuses on trying to implement and disseminate social science, evidence-based research on the growing Texas Latino community.

We are, a project that, as I mentioned, it’s collaborative and so we are composed of course, of faculty, but also students and community partners, folks in the community that are also doing this work. And we are of course trying to better understand the Texas Latino electorate when we are thinking about local, state, and national elections.

But not only that, I think we also wanna better understand the community so we can inform politics and policy making and also advocacy around our communities. So we wanna be able to provide research that is rigorous based on social science evidence. At the cutting edge of what we do as social scientist, but also in a way that is culturally competent, that’s really attentive to community needs and that’s accessible to people outside of academia, Outside of the ivory tower. And so we wanna empower and support community leaders, policymakers and researchers at UT and in the state of Texas in their efforts to try to bring meaningful, real and lasting change that addresses the pressing issues of the Latino community. So when I joined UT last year, one of the areas that I saw that really was an area for and opportunity was around better understanding the Texas Latino community.

I grew up in New York, and also I got my PhD in California, both really large states with large Latino population. One of the things that I noticed from California and thinking about my graduate school career was just how much work was being done to try to understand the Latino community in California and how that work that was being done at the campus where I got my PhD at UCLA was really changing the conversation amongst policy makers and amongst community advocates.

When I moved to Texas and took on this job, one of the things that I felt really inspired to do was to try to do something around trying to better understand the Latino community in Texas with an eye towards improving and addressing the needs of our communities.

[00:04:52] Angie: Yeah. And I think that’s so great. We’re starting to see in news media a lot of focus on Latinos, a lot of focus on Latino voters, but we have to remember that Latino voters are not the same in every state and context really matters. There’s a lot of focus on California. There’s a lot of focus on Florida, so it’s really nice to have a project that really focuses specifically on Texas and the issues that are important to Texans. Because we know that those are gonna be different than what is important to the Latino population in Florida or California or New York, or all these other places.

It’s really great that we’re doing this and that we’re really digging into what’s on the mind of Latinos in Texas. What are the projects that we’re working on that we can share with, everybody.

[00:05:40] Angela: Yeah. Thank you. Let’s talk a little bit about our survey and then maybe we could talk about other projects that we have in mind and other things that we as a team, with Dr. Clealand and with you, Dr. Gutierrez, we’ve talked about, right? The vision that we have for this project moving forward in the years to come. So let’s start with our survey, which we fielded around the 2022 midterm election, and it was, as I mentioned earlier, a collaboration.

We do everything as a collaborative team, really, bringing the expertise that each one of us brings to the table. So we asked a number of different questions and we fielded this survey to Texas Latino population. And so we did what it’s known to be an over sample. In other words, we were trying to get enough Latinos in the Rio Grande Valley because we know from other work in our field in Latino politics, that oftentimes this tends to be one of the communities in the areas that’s oftentimes underrepresented in research and if we wanted to get a sense of the Texas Latino electorate and their more pressing issues and needs, we wanted to make sure that our sample was representative of the Texas Latino population.

We did an over sample of Latinos in the Rio Grande Valley, but we also have coverage of Latinos all throughout the state. And we used the firm yu gov to do our study. We asked a number of different questions. We could talk a little bit about some of those really interesting findings that we got.

We asked a number of different questions on attitudes about the most pressing issues that the Texas governor needed to address. We also asked questions about their favorability towards the Texas senators, also the Texas governor. Also in terms of the presidential approval, we asked questions about attitudes toward pressing issues, right? Such as gun laws, abortion.

We asked about election laws because we know that Texas is one of the states that one is heavily gerrymandered. And it’s one of the states that is the most difficult states to vote. So we wanted to get a sense of whether or not our respondents had any challenges trying to access the ballot box and if they could tell us a little bit about what that was. So that gives a a big overview of some of the things that we asked in the survey. It was pretty expansive.

[00:08:01] Angie: Yeah. So this survey we also wanna mention was done in English and Spanish, and respondents were able to take the survey online.

So this was a completely online survey. Is there anything that you think was really exciting or that you really latched onto when you were looking at the results from this data?

[00:08:21] Angela: I would say some of the really interesting things were just how what we know from research in terms of Latinos, compared to other groups in the United States, other racial and ethnic communities, is just how distinct Latinos are, even in the state of Texas compared to one other Latinos and other parts of the country, but also to other voters in the rest of the state.

I thought that was pretty interesting. Some of those things were their approval for Abbott, which is much lower right compared to white voters in the state. Also, the extent to which they had different views on things like sales of guns and ammunition.

Even the percentage of them who reported having a gun in their home. But also how they still reported pretty high rates that they would support state laws that would be more strict when it came to buying guns and ammunition. So I think that was one of the really interesting things.

We could talk numbers, but when we asked our Latino respondents if they had a gun in their home, 37% of them said yes and 62% of them said no. But even those right that reported this we see that when it came to their attitudes towards policies on gun control they are much more firm.

They do want gun control, right? They do want more strict laws when it comes to buying guns and ammunition. They also, we had really high rates of reporting background checks on all gun purchases at 74%. Banning AR-15 rifles nationwide that was at 49%. And I bring this up because I think it’s so relevant given that we’re right now in this session, the Texas legislature.

Yeah.

[00:10:00] Angie: It’s such a pressing issue. And if you think about even just the past couple weeks, the number of mass shootings that have happened, we still see about a third of the survey sample has guns in their home. But they do think that things need to get a little bit stricter when we’re talking about, guns and ammunition.

So again, 64% said guns and ammunition should be a little bit more strict in terms of who’s able to get that access. I found that really striking as well.

[00:10:31] Angela: Yeah. Was there anything else you found interesting?

[00:10:34] Angie: Yeah, so the other question that I found really interesting were the views on abortion.

So we know in Texas that this is a really big issue. We have these new restrictions on access to abortion. 33% said that abortion should be legal in all cases and another 43% said abortion should be legal depending on certain circumstances. So you have like over 75% of the sample there saying that we should have some access to abortion or more access to abortion than what we currently have, given the ways that abortion has been talked about and how it’s such a lightning rod issue.

I’m interested to see how this is going to impact future elections. Not only the midterms that we just had, but down the road, especially when we’re looking at presidential elections and we know we have a higher turnout. What is that going to do in terms of shaping the electorate?

[00:11:37] Angela: Yeah. Yeah. I thought this was really interesting. The one thing that I held onto from those findings were how much respondents reported either having a personal experience with an abortion or being in close contact with someone who had, so I think it was 40% said that they knew someone who had an abortion and then 9% said that it was either them or their partner.

That was a pretty striking number in terms of these are the things that are coloring the way that respondents view the issue because it’s so deeply personal and close to their own experiences. I agree with you. I think that we know that the issue of abortion has been such a critical issue because access to it is barred and limited in so many ways in the state of Texas. Yet we see how it’s such an important issue for Latinos in the state that it’s an issue that moving forward, gonna potentially impact how Latinos are viewing candidates in the 2024 presidential election.

[00:12:36] Angie: Yeah. And if we think about procedures that are done that often aren’t thought of as abortion care, but actually are forms of abortion care. So things like miscarriages that are incomplete, that need additional medical assistance. You start getting a larger segment of the population who is realizing that they are being impacted by these laws.

other aspects of healthcare and access to prenatal care for women. It all dovetails together into this broader issue that is impacting Latinas in the state. This is something that we’re going to see have great importance in the future.

[00:13:16] Angela: Yeah, that’s right. There were a couple of other questions related to racial categorization in the census, which are really interesting. I know you, have a paper with Dr. Clealand on this. Oftentimes, racial categorization and pan ethnic identity and how we categorize groups is always a topic for debate.

I was curious if you had any thoughts about the share of respondents who reported that they were mestizo. But I think even the percentage of respondents who reported that they didn’t remember filling out the census. And that was, I think, striking to me because as we recall, the 2020 census There was a lot of debate around it, but it was very much politicized because of the surrounding issue of potentially including the citizenship question.

There were a lot of fears about how, this was gonna re potentially result in an undercount of, immigrant communities like Latinos and Asians. We know that there’s always under counts with the census, but I think even just to get a sense of like that there were respondents in the state of Texas and then how this resulted in changes in reapportionment.

I Was curious if you had any thoughts about either the racial categorization or just the census more generally?

[00:14:28] Angie: So the racial category question that we asked was like, which racial category did you pick on the 2020 census? That was the question that I was looking at that I was curious to see what was happening there.

So we saw that 57% of Latino respondents said that they chose the white category. That is astoundingly high, in my opinion, in comparison to what we see in California, and in other southwestern states. We see that these places tend to pick some other race and majority of Latinos pick some other race when we look at overall what they’re picking on the census. In Texas it looks like 17% of our respondents chose that some other race. Additionally, another 7% said that they were black or African American. There is a larger segment of the population who is claiming to be Afro Latino in the state of Texas.

Mm-hmm. Which is really interesting. I find these results really interesting and really fascinating because we know that there’s a lot of debate going on about what the next census is going to look like and how we’re going to categorize the Latino population, whether or not they’re going to be their own kind of racial slash ethnic group.

And if they are still going to be picking white and Latino or if they’re going to be picking Latino and black. So I think it’s really interesting to think about these future changes and how that’s going to impact who is identifying as Latino and how that’s going to impact in terms of redistricting and, Apportionment of government funding and all of the kind of government type things that are tied to the census.

[00:16:13] Angela: There’s so much in this data that I wish we could talk about it. And we could go on and on. The three of us, Dr. Cleveland, Dr. Gutierrez and myself, we will be presenting Part of this at the American Political Science Association annual conference meeting happening in Los Angeles at the end of August, beginning of September.

So we are just really diving into the data and trying to understand Latinos and what drives their attitudes on certain issues. One question that we’ve been trying to get a better sense of is what drives Latino more conservative attitudes.

I know this has been, again, a topic of debate, I think primarily because oftentimes, , there is a misconception about the Latino electorate more generally. And so we’re trying to address some of these questions, particularly looking at Texas Latino voters in 2022, but, I think some of the, things that maybe we could also share with our audience before we wrap up are some of the other things that we are working on, that we are envisioning as part of this project so that they can get excited about continuing to follow the work that we’re doing as part of project the Latino, within Latino studies at ut.

Yeah.

[00:17:21] Angie: So do you wanna tell us about belonging, Angela?

[00:17:24] Angela: One of the, I would say, adjacent projects to Proyecto Latino is certainly the book project that I’m currently working on. Which the question, it’s entitled, “Truly At Home?” The Policies of Inclusion in Latino Political Participation.”, at Home. the project triest understand perceptions of social inclusion and belonging in United States and to US society, and the extent to which these attitudes of feeling included or excluded are related to political participation among Latinos.

So from the survey, I think one of the really striking things for me is just how different. Perceptions of belonging in US society are among Texas, Latinos compared to Latinos and the rest of the country. The distribution of what kind of the data, what this data looked like in our survey, after the midterm elections.

I’ve never seen a distribution like this, just to put it bluntly in that way. Interesting. Yes, most Latinos in other parts of the country, and even in national samples, their perceptions of belonging and inclusion are much higher. In some ways I think, the more I thought about, These result and the more thought about this data, we have evidence as to why Latinos in Texas might feel more excluded and have lower levels of belonging, or feelings of being valued and respect in new society.

So we had a massive, shooting that particularly targeted Latinos in El Paso. We have a historical legacy of violence towards Mexicans in the state, Historically we have evidence these forms of exclusion have been pretty strong.

This is one of the other things too about trying to better understand how Latinos in Texas are a little bit different from other Latinos in other parts of the country, right? Even though Texas has such a large Latino population, even living amongst other Latinos may not be enough to garner Latinos with a sense of belonging in US society, right?

They’re still receiving these societal messages and maybe living in context where there’s been a formal legacy of exclusion that still impacts their day-to-day and impacts how they’re thinking about their sense of place and sense of being in US society.

So that’s on the belonging, but more on that, I think, the book will be at some point in a bookshelf near you, but it a little bit of a while before that happens.

[00:19:39] Angie: We can’t wait for that to happen. We know you have some great research and we’re so interested in knowing how Texans differ from the national sample and other state samples in terms of belonging and what that means for political participation because feeling like you belong is really important to your sense of efficacy. And so getting to really look at the numbers and really understand how that works is fascinating.

[00:20:07] Angela: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I’m excited about it too. . So let’s a little bit about some of the things that we’ve envisioned for the project and maybe some of the things that we’ve discussed in terms of our projects on qualitative work, maybe trying to do more outreach and better understanding of Latinos and rural Texas.

Other ways in which we’ve been thinking about expanding this work that we’ve already begun with our first survey.

Yeah, so you mentioned the over sample of the RGV. One aspect that we are interested in is really getting a better sense of how Latino voters in the Rio Grande Valley differ from other border populations.

If they differ from other border populations, if they differ from people who live in central Texas or east Texas or West Texas. We’re really interested in doing some qualitative studies that look at the border and these border towns and gets a better sense of their sense of group identity, their sense of belonging to the United States versus maybe not belonging to the United States.

And understanding if there’s a stronger connection to this in between fluidness space. And what all of that really means for political participation. That’s one aspect that we’re really excited about. The other aspect that we’ve been working on is developing things on campus for students to get involved in to teach them about voting, to educate them about what is going on in their city and in their state and nationally.

And this past school year we did a couple of projects where we tried to increase awareness about the. The 2020 midterms and we’re really looking forward to doing more of that in the future. Are there other things that you are really excited about, Angela? Yeah.

I would say those are certainly the things I’m really the most excited about expanding this work.

We do a lot of quantitative work in terms of collecting big survey data and in a kind of larger scale. But we know that oftentimes it’s limited because we don’t get a sense of the why in some cases. Or we may miss talking to folks who wouldn’t otherwise show up in our surveys because maybe they’re not registered voters.

So I think one of the things that I’m really excited about is, Getting a better sense of how do we mobilize Latinos more generally in the state of Texas, those who are not registered voters, but who could potentially be registered because they are eligible to vote, but who just either haven’t been asked.

To register or who maybe maybe there’s something that’s deterred them from, seeing themselves as stakeholders in US politics. Maybe it is a lack of belonging, right? Or maybe it is something else altogether. So I think. Really trying to get a better sense of Latinos who are, who wouldn’t otherwise show up in our surveys.

And that means that we have to do the in qualitative work and do lot more work to try to better understand these folks. And, I’m really excited about that part of our project, of our research collaborative. Team. And the other thing that’s right, our students getting our students involved, so looking with an eye towards 2024 one of the things that I’ve been thinking a lot about is how do we bring in our students and how do we get them involved in campaigns around mobilization as well.

The programming that we did over the last year about getting our students to get a better sense of the issues that impact their communities and how to engage in politics left many students with the question of like, how do I do more? How can I mobilize my family? How can I mobilize the people in my community?

And I’ve been thinking a lot about A class right around the 2024 elections with thinking about mobilization efforts, get out the vote efforts and how to work with you and Dr. C Cleland and thinking about, potentially we could do something around that.

[00:24:16] Angie: We should make a social media influencer program. Make a little micro influencers all around campus.

[00:24:23] Angela: Yeah. Yeah, that would be fantastic. That would be fantastic.

[00:24:28] Angie: Thank you so much an Angela Dr. Ocampo for sharing all of this with us. I think it’s really fascinating and I look forward to working with you all and to building more out for this

[00:24:40] Angela: project.

Thank you, Dr. Gutierrez. I am thrilled and excited about working with you all and continuing with this project. And anyone is more interested in this. They can find our information on the Latino studies at UT website. Are, there are email addresses you can reach us there. Coming soon.

We’re working on some of our, kind of our launch for the marketing of our project. We have some cool designs and things that we’ve been working on, so stay tuned for what that’s gonna look like and for our presence on social media as well. Until next time. Thank you.

Thanks.

[00:25:17] Angie: Hi Allall. This is Ashley

[00:25:19] Angela: Navs, the Communications Associate, a Latino Studies. Thank you for listening to this week’s episode. Make sure to check out the Latino Studies Instagram page. Follow us at Latino studies, ut

[00:25:32] Angie: to keep the conversation

[00:25:33] Angela: going.