Allegation of racist Republican chant is false

The first full day of the Republican convention was marred by an incident in which an attendee allegedly threw nuts at a black CNN journalist and referred to the journalist as an "animal." A Harper's magazine journalist also alleged that party delegates were racist in chanting "U-S-A" while a Puerto Rican party official with an accent was speaking.

The racism accusation has turned a video of the incident into a YouTube hit viewed more than 158,000 times in less than 24 hours. But the accusation is false. Here's what happened.

In the minutes before the video begins, very loud supporters of Ron Paul had very loudly chanted "Seat Maine Now" and "Point Of Order" to protest a party decision last week to strip 10 Paul-supporting Maine delegates of their convention seats. Supporters of Mitt Romney responded - somewhat irrationally - with the vociferous "U-S-A" chants. The brouhaha simply happened to occur as the Puerto Rican took the stage.

The U-S-A chant:

 

 The angry Paul supporters in the arena hallway after their own chants: