The show also followed several decades of demonization of the changes that happened in the 60s. I sometimes think of Mad Men as making the point that the 60s happened for (good) reasons.
In CA at least, there is a large gap:
Despite those changes and others, the proportion of freshmen from underrepresented racial groups, including Blacks, Latinos and women, attending the UC campuses, averaged 20% before Prop 209, then dropped to 15% in 1998, then slowly increased over the next 20 years, reaching a peak of 37% in 2016, according to the system. However, the percentage of underrepresented students graduating from high school had doubled to over 56% by 2016.
Source: https://edsource.org/2020/students-at-californias-top-tier-u...