Good question, and since I posted it, you need a reply from me. It's very loosely related, if at all.

Here's why I posted this inquiry --

1. Since visiting Michigan for several weeks during the summers of 1962 and 1963, Northern attitudes towards Southerners have intrigued me, especially with regard to racial issues.
   
2. The American public seems to believe that most if not all racial sterotypes, racial bias and racial prejudice originated in the South.
   
3. The American public also seems to believe that Southern racial attitudes brought about slavery and caused the Civil War.

That's a loose relationship, but "Mad Men" doesn't figure in it. How is anything in that series connected?

1. As mentioned above, the American public seems to assume that most if not all racial problems originated in the South.
   
2. AMC's "Mad Men" series focuses on people living in and around New York City in 1960.
   
3. Whenever New Yorkers in this series express opinions about minorities &c, most do so much as Southerners would have circa 1960.

I find the last point quite interesting. If there's been anything in film or on TV which depicted similar scenes, I have missed them.

Over time, you'll notice more black people in "Mad Men" than we ever saw in the "Andy Griffith Show", but they're nearly always in the background. Here's a writer's opinion from The Atlantic --

I actually think it's a beautiful, lovely, incredibly powerful omission. Mad Men is a show told from the perspective of a particular world. The people in that world barely see black people. They're there all the time--Hollis in the elevator, women working in the powder-room, the Draper's maid, the janitors, the black guy hired at Leo Burnett--but they're never quite seen. I think this is an incredible statement on how privilege, at its most insidious, really works.

Folks, am I missing something, or do we ordinarily expect that kind of remark to be about Southern slaveholders? I'm also interested in Northern attitudes on race, a general bias against anyone who wasn't caucasian, prevalent before, during and long after the Civil War.

This dialogue involves a sales presentation for a Jewish department store named Menken's. A Jewish employee named David Cohen was pulled from the mail room to help fill out the table. In the final seconds of this disasterous encounter, note the look the Jewish employee gets.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oScedUkimiI&feature=related