Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas doesn’t speak much on the job, but during an interview last month at Duquesne Law School in Pittsburgh, he offered some candid insight into his thoughts about politics and President Barack Obama.

Asked if Obama’s election as the first black president came as a surprise, Thomas said it didn’t, adding that he’d always believed a black person would become president one day.

He went on to say, however, that Obama had only been elected because the president won over the elites and media, something Thomas argued, most black people must do in order to advance.

“The thing that I always knew is that it would have to be a black president who was approved by the elites and the media, because anybody they didn’t agree with, they would take apart,” Thomas said in a clip that surfaced on Friday. “You pick your person. Any black person who says something that is not the prescribed things that they expect from a black person will be picked apart.”

Read more: Huff Post