Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggested to C-SPAN that the nation’s first black president came by way of a compliant media that only embraced him because he fit the stereotypical mold.

President Obama was “approved by the elites and media,” Mr. Thomas said last month during a lengthy roundtable discussion at Duquesne University. If that weren’t true, he argued, Mr. Obama never would have escaped his campaign unscathed.

Mr. Thomas made the statements in context of a question about his level of surprise on seeing America elect a black man. He said he wasn’t surprised — he “always thought there would be black coaches, heads of universities.”

But his expectations came with conditions.

“Any black person who says something that is not the prescribed things that they expect from a black person will be picked apart. … So, I always assumed [a black president] would be someone the media had to agree with,” Mr. Thomas said.

Mr. Thomas further said he’d never engaged in much conversation with Mr. Obama. They only shook hands during the inauguration, he said.

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