Wait a minute. Deval Patrick is black? Get OUT!

Mike Mennonno notes that now that the national press has discovered Our Deval, suddenly his race is mentioned all the time:

... If Deval himself was "blacker," or had run a "blacker" campaign — fear of his "blackness" is what Healey was trying to force into white voters' consciousness with her rape ads--what do you think would have been the outcome? He would likely still have won, but by a slimmer margin. He didn't play into Healey's race-baiting, and that turned out to be the best thing for his campaign. But the undercurrents of racial fear and loathing Healey tried to exploit do deserve real and systematic examination. Just because we voted in a black governor doesn't mean that all the sudden everything's hunky-dory when it comes to race in Massachusetts. ...