So the original 'chili Queens" who brought chili con carne to Texas sometimes added beans. It was often used as a topping for tamales. If you go back further, pretty much as far as you can go on this particular subject, the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayans all had precursor dishes that were meat, peppers, spices, and beans. Delicious proto chili!

Beans have been a part of chili since the beginning. You can't add them for a lot of competitions, but that doesn't make the off-competition stuff any less authentic. Central Texas gets weird about it, but they get weird about a lot of shit. They're the ones who took the recipe from tejanas and removed the beans in the first place.

That being said, I prefer a chili with no beans. You can skip the rest of this comment because it's just a guy who is now reminiscing about chili past and thinking of chili future.

I will take a bunch of peppers I've grown (usually super hot, but I have some guajillos and jalapenos in the mix this year) and smoke them, yellow onion, garlic, beer, cayenne, masa harina, strong coffee, a collection of spices to make my own chili powder (not a secret, I just don't have my recipe card in front of me....it heavily features smoked paprika and cumin), a little homemade adobo sauce, homemade bacon, and whatever leftover beef I have (usually brisket, sometimes chuck, and around the holidays rib roast) cut into little cubes and cooked up. I don't think I've made chili with beef that wasn't leftovers for a couple of decades.

It takes probably half an hour of work, then half a day of simmering stirring very occasionally, then mix in the masa harina 15 or 20 minutes before you're ready to serve.

I think most of the world finds it to be an odd selling point.

TIL, thanks.