El Modelo – Albuquerque, New Mexico
Growing up in the 60s in a bucolic village in Northern New Mexico, we had no idea about such things as political correctness and multi-culturalism. It would be decades before the ascendency of the “woke” movement. My friends included descendents of Montezuma, scions of the Spanish explorers, Native Americans from a nearby Pueblo and even a few “white” kids. None of us really thought about things like “inclusion” and “diversity.” We lived it! Being kids, there was naturally a lot of good-natured name-calling and teasing, but even when tempers flared, I can’t recall racial stereotype-based derogatory terms ever used in anger. We thought nothing of teasing the “rich” white kids about their “white as them” Rainbo bread sandwiches and they retorted…