The black CNN camerawoman at the center of a racist assault at the Republican National Convention spoke out for the first time today to provide new details about the incident she says wasn't all that surprising.
"I hate that it happened, but I'm not surprised at all,"
Patricia Carroll told Richard Prince's Journal-isms
.
Carroll was reportedly struck by a bag of peanuts hurled at her
by two RNC attendees
who shouted "
this is what we feed animals
."
"This is Florida, and I'm from the Deep South," she told the blog. "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."
According to Carroll, no one at the convention bothered to identify the culprits before they were tossed out, but one delegation head told her they were alternates.
Carroll says that, while she herself won't be granting any additional interviews, she hopes her ordeal will serve as a "wake-up call" to black people. "People were living in euphoria for a while," she said. "People think we're gone further than we have."
CNN, which Carroll notes "has been behind me 100 percent," said little concerning the incident
outside of acknowledging its occurrence
. Wolf Blitzer
offered his own thoughts
on the assault yesterday, calling it "an ugly reminder that there is an element of hatred that still exists in our country."
