WASHINGTON — A defiant Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas declared himself a “walking contradiction” to his critics for refusing to bow to social strain for black Americans to have liberal political opinions.

The excessive courtroom’s second-longest-serving justice in US historical past defined in a podcast interview how he’s resisted strain over the many years as one of the most distinguished black conservative figures in the nation.

“When I came to this town, one of the greatest difficulties, if you think about it, was that there were those who thought that I should think a certain way,” Thomas, 78, lamented on the “Verdict with Ted Cruz” podcast.

“They said, ‘Oh, you’re confused.’ Well, I’m not confused. You’re confused. You confuse me with someone who’s been in indentured servitude or something,” he continued on the episode that dropped Monday.

“But at any rate, they think that here’s the way you’re supposed to think again … [because of] your skin color. There’s this kind of deterministic view that you’re supposed to think this because we say so.”

Thomas, the second black justice to serve on the Supreme Court, spoke with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) at the senator’s ebook launch for “Going Further: The Incomparable Clarence Thomas” on Tuesday.

Justice Clarence Thomas ripped into social expectations that the shade of one’s pores and skin could be determinative of one’s political opinions. @tedcruz/X

Sen. Ted Cruz is set to launch a ebook on Justice Clarence Thomas on Tuesday. @tedcruz/X

Cruz, a former Solicitor General of Texas who argued before the Supreme Court and Thomas in the early 2000s, authored his tome on the justice after conducting roughly 9 hours of one-on-one interviews with him. 

During the interview, Thomas praised Cruz for defending him during the attacks he confronted several years in the past over his spouse’s ties to conservative teams and presents he obtained from rich elites. He called Cruz and Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee “friends” who stood for him and Ginni Thomas.

During the podcast interview, Thomas mirrored on how household and faith formed his conservative beliefs. 

Thomas, who was closely influenced by his grandfather, recounted clashing with him over the state of America. His grandfather requested him, “What country is better than this country with all its problems?” and he recalled being unable to reply that. 

The justice beforehand described how his grandfather had no training, was raised by a freed slave, and yet never complained. Recently, he recounted that after his grandparents “died suddenly in 1983, the decision I made was to live the rest of my life as a memorial to theirs.”

Clarence Thomas initially seethed at Thomas Sowell’s ebook on black training, but later rediscovered it. Amazon UK

During his time in legislation college, Thomas once bristled at receiving a copy of conservative mental Thomas Sowell’s ebook, “Black Education: Myths and Tragedies,” though he later rediscovered and warmed up to it.

The justice had been a “left-wing radical” during his youth, per Cruz’s description, attending an anti-war demonstration at Harvard Square in April 1970 that devolved into an indignant riot. 

At the time, Thomas had been attending the College of the Holy Cross and was disillusioned with the Catholic Church, pissed off with its lack of ethical readability on racism. 

But the nation’s senior-most justice defined that the riot was a turning level for him. 

“I think that was the Road to Damascus moment. That’s the moment where you look into the abyss, and it looks back,” Thomas said, including that he “couldn’t answer why” he was behaving that approach at the time.

“[I] walked in front of the chapel because I was exhausted but couldn’t sleep,” Thomas defined about what occurred after the riot. “I faced it, the Blessed Sacrament, and I asked God to take hate out of my heart. And I said, ‘If you take a hate out of my heart, I will never hate again.’”

“And that was the moment for me, when I began to move in a more positive direction.”