Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas told a group of college students on Tuesday that race and gender relations are worse now than when he was a kid.

Credit: AP

Speaking at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, Fla., Thomas said his "sadness is that we are probably today more race and difference-conscious than I was in the 1960s when I went to school," according to Yahoo! News.

"To my knowledge, I was the first black kid in Savannah, Georgia, to go to a white school. Rarely did the issue of race come up,” he said. “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."

He surmised: "That’s a part of the deal."