The Boston Globe's "black, two Jews, and a cripple" moment?

The governor’s race in Massachusetts is getting interesting. There are three announced candidates and two others flirting around the edges, and it looks more and more like the people of the Bay State might have a pretty decent field to choose from. The policies and ideas of the five leading names are sufficiently different that it could be a real chance for the people to choose their future.

But those opinions are pretty much moot, as far as one Boston Globe columnist is concerned. He’s more focused on what the candidates are versus what they stand for.

Two Democrats and one Republican have officially declared, while one more of each is flirting with the race. We have former Clinton administration official Deval Patrick and current Attorney General Tom Reilly on the Democrat side, with businessman Chris Gabrieli (briefly expected to be Reilly’s running mate) testing the waters. On the GOP side, Lieutenant Governor Kerry Murphy Healey wants to step up to the main job, while former Turnpike Commissioner and populist hero Christy Myhos says he might challenge her.

But according to Derrick Jackson, that’s not what’s really important. What we should all focus on is that Patrick is black, Healey a woman, and the other three are white men. That, and the fact that Reilly’s one-day running mate would have been an excellent, superb candidate had she simply paid her taxes, and bills, and loans — because that should have been trumped by her being a black woman.

Maybe someday we will achieve Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream of people being judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. Until that day, however, we can trust good liberals like Mr. Jackson to make sure that the color of people’s skin (and arrangements of their plumbing, boudoir preferences, and heaven knows what other factors) are featured front-and-center.