Article content continued

“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.”

Judge Thomas, who was brought up in poverty speaking Gullah creole as his first language, developed a strong libertarian philosophy at college after winning a scholarship to Yale.

He was confirmed as the second black justice in the Supreme Court’s history after bruising Senate hearings during which Anita Hill, an African-American academic, accused him of sexual harassment.

His judicial career has been built on his belief that individual action rather than social welfare programs are needed to overcome adversity and in the past year he has twice written Supreme Court opinions that have angered many blacks and northern liberals.

The court reined in affirmative action laws and struck down key provisions of voting rights legislation passed in the 1960s to ensure access of ethnic minorities to cast ballots.

‘The worst I have been treated was by northern liberal elites’

He also told the students that throughout his career he had experienced more instances of discrimination and poor treatment in the North than the South.

“The worst I have been treated was by northern liberal elites… not by the people of Savannah, Georgia,” he said.

He has previously described how long-established law firms took little notice of his Yale law degree, apparently believing that he was the beneficiary of the sort of affirmative action programs that he opposes.