‘AT SOME POINT, WE’RE GOING TO BE FATIGUED WITH EVERYBODY BEING THE VICTIM’

'It's becoming a gladiator spectacle': Black Justice Clarence Thomas says he is 'exhausted' with people saying they have been 'victimized' because of their race

Daily Mail
February 17, 2018

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said that he was exhausted with the current climate of victimhood culture in America today.

'At some point, we're going to be fatigued with everybody being the victim,' the 69-year-old justice said during an on-stage interview at the Library of Congress in Washington on Thursday. 'I just get worn down,' he added.

Thomas, the second African American to serve on the Supreme Court, also relayed a recent experience he had with a female college student in Kansas where she told him: 'I'm really tired of having to play the role of being black. I just want to go to school.'

Appointed to the bench in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush, the famously taciturn justice said that his grandfather's resilience inspired him to never take anything for granted.

'When I was a kid, there were tons of people who were in really bad circumstances,' Thomas said. 'My grandfather would not let us wallow in that.'

Born in 1948, Thomas was raised in Georgia coastal lowlands and spent his childhood working on his grandfather's farm.

With most opportunities unavailable in the Jim Crow South to the black community, Thomas said his family did the best that they could with what little they had.

'You always have to play the hand you're dealt,' he said. 'If you're dealt a bad hand, you still have to play it.'

Thomas added that he considers his grandfather 'my hero' and 'the single greatest human being I've ever met... With nine months of education. But he never saw himself as a victim.'

The long-time lawman also touched on the the confirmation process for federal judges, a process he went through five times in ten years which only 'got increasingly worse.'

'I don't think the process is what it ought to be,' Thomas said. 'I think that these are serious jobs, and they should be serious. I don't think they should become spectacles.'

Thomas faced a grueling confirmation process to become a justice on the highest court in the land. Allegations of sexual harassment from a former assistant, Anita Hill, nearly derailed his bid for the seat 28 years ago. Thomas denied the allegations.

'I don't think the process is what it ought to be,' Thomas said. 'I think that these are serious jobs, and they should be serious. I don't think they should become spectacles.'

'This is not the Roman Colosseum,' he continued. 'We're not gladiators. And I think we're going to lose some of our best people who choose not to go through the ordeal. They don't want to have to fight the lion in order to be a judge or to be in government. And I think it's our own fault for allowing this to happen.'