Black CNN camerawoman who was racially taunted at Republican National Convention is 'not surprised' it happened

Patricia Carroll, 34, was pelted with peanuts on the convention floor Tuesday by two alternate GOP delegates who said, “This is what we feed animals.”

Republicans cheer during a musical act on Tuesday night at the Republican National Convention in Tampa.

The black CNN camerawoman targeted in a racially-charged incident at the Republican National Convention earlier this week has come forward, saying she is “not surprised” it happened.
Patricia Carroll, 34, was pelted with peanuts on the convention floor Tuesday by two alternate GOP delegates who said, “This is what we feed animals.”


Carroll revealed her name to a reporter with the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education after the story made headlines.

“I hate that it happened, but I’m not surprised at all,” said Carroll, an Alabama native.

“This is Florida, and I’m from the Deep South,” she said. “You come to places like this, you can count the black people on your hand. They see us doing things they don’t think I should do.”

While Carroll said the racist incident could have happened anywhere, she acknowledged she stood out at the RNC.

“There are not that many black women there,” she said.

But she told the Maynard Institute that she doesn’t want the incident to be used to score a political point.

“This situation could happen to me at the Democratic convention or standing on the street corner,” she said.

Carroll’s comments were published the day after Condoleezza Rice, the first African-American woman to serve as secretary of state, got a long standing ovation after making a powerful statement about overcoming racism in her convention speech.

Growing up in Jim Crow Birmingham, Rice told the delegates that her parents made her "believe that even though she can't have a hamburger at the Woolworth's lunch counter - she can be President of the United State, and she becomes the Secretary of State."

Carroll told the Maynard Institute that what happened to her “should be a wake-up call to black people.”

“People were living in euphoria for a while,” she said. “People think we've gone further than we have."