109: The Oil & GasLighting Industry of Texas with Award-winning Director Alex Stapleton

In many ways, Texas is representative of the demographic and economic dynamism of America. The Lone Star State is very diverse with Latinos as the largest ethnic group; plus, it boasts the largest African American population in the country. Despite the sweeping demographic change of the last few decades, Texas remains deeply conservative with only one Black and one Latino among statewide elected officials – pushing political observers to begin questioning why Texas politics have remained unchanged. The economic boom of the last decade, dubbed the Texas Miracle, has also skipped over Black and Brown families who are themselves helping to drive this growth and expansion. This is especially true for historic Black communities in one of the wealthiest parts of the world – Houston and the Texas Gulf Coast.

 

Join us as I SEE U’s Eddie Robinson speaks unguarded with award-winning filmmaker, Alex Stapleton. Her documentary, “The Price of Oil,” is part of HBO’s ‘God Save Texas,’ a three-part docuseries now streaming on Max. The renowned director turns a critical eye on the lucrative oil and gas industry – and documents how these companies created a toxic hell for her family and their Houston-area community – destroying the hard-won oasis where Black families could finally own their homes and build wealth. When outsiders would merely suggest to these Texas residents that they should simply move – Stapleton turns the table to question why business leaders and government officials failed from the start to fully compensate generations of Black and Brown communities through adequate health resources and regulation of an industry run amok.