Most often it addresses the role of men and women, but it also touches upon racial issues. In the first three episodes, we learn that the advertising agency doesn't hire Jews and expects Jewish clients to go to Jewish agencies. Blacks serve in such menial jobs as train conductor, elevator operator, and bathroom attendant. The ad men hire a family of peasant-style "Chinamen" (complete with chopsticks and chickens) to greet an associate returning from his honeymoon.
There are also a couple of references to Indians. In the first episode (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes), a tobacco executive gets annoyed because people are questioning the safety of cigarettes. "I'm not selling rifles here," he says. "I'm in the tobacco business. We're selling America. The Indians gave it to us, for shit's sake."
In the third episode (Marriage of Figaro), a birthday party is going on at ad executive Don Draper's house. The kids run through the house playing cowboys and Indians. Everyone has a cowboy hat except a boy with polio who has to use walking sticks. He's stuck being the Indian.
So far I'd say Mad Men is a great show--in the same league as The Sopranos and Six Feet Under. Check it out.
For more on the subject, see TV Shows Featuring Indians.
Typical (white male) asshole retro-envisioning of what barely passes for historical accuracy in any true sense of the term - at least it's confined to a subject area that is 99.9% neglected by millions of greasy faced, sofa-ridden, chip and dip hogsters: recent American History.
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