Speaking at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, Fla., Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas told a gathering of college students that Americans today are too sensitive about race, Yahoo News reports.
"My sadness is that we are probably today more race- and difference-conscious than I was in the 1960s when I went to school. To my knowledge, I was the first black kid in Savannah, Ga., to go to a white school. Rarely did the issue of race come up," Thomas said during a chapel service hosted by the university. "Now, name a day it doesn’t come up. Differences in race, differences in sex, somebody doesn’t look at you right, somebody says something. Everybody is sensitive. If I had been as sensitive as that in the 1960s, I’d still be in Savannah. Every person in this room has endured a slight. Every person. Somebody has said something that has hurt their feelings or did something to them—left them out.
"That’s a part of the deal," he added.
Thomas mentioned that throughout his career, he has experienced more instances of discrimination and poor treatment in the North than the South, Yahoo reports.
"The worst I have been treated was by Northern liberal elites. The absolute worst I have ever been treated," Thomas said. "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, Ga."
Read more at the Yahoo News.