Clarence Thomas: ‘Northern Liberal Elites’ Treated Me Worse than People in Pre-Civil Rights South

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas says that he encountered far worse treatment from “northern liberal elites” than from anyone in the segregated South of his youth, according to Yahoo! News.

“The worst I have been treated was by northern liberal elites. The absolute worst I have ever been treated,” Thomas said at Palm Beach Atlantic University in Florida. “The worst things that have been done to me, the worst things that have been said about me, by northern liberal elites, not by the people of Savannah, Georgia.”

People are much more sensitive about and focused on racial differences today than they were when he was the only black student at his all-white school in Georgia, where “rarely did the issue of race come up” and people weren’t as prone to take offense. Nowadays, “somebody doesn’t look at you right, somebody says something.”

“If I had been as sensitive as that in the 1960s, I’d still be in Savannah,” he said.