ST. PAUL, Minn. — When the cameras turned to those on the convention floor during last night’s speeches from Republicans like Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, they showed an aging convention floor awash in white.

Much of the discussion during this week’s Republican National Convention has centered on ways to make the Republican Party more inclusive and diverse. But when it came to the audience on the convention floor here in the Xcel Energy Center, the GOP stereotype of being old and the white rang true.

Attendees not fitting this description were few and far between. For a party in the minority in the House and Senate and facing the possibility of a Democratic White House, the new message of inclusion so far appears to be empty rhetoric.

There’s certainly no shortage of eagerness among young Republicans to get out on the floor and show that their party’s members aren’t all balding and advanced in age.

They say they're being held back by the Republican establishment.

Zachary Laney, a high school student from Pensacola, Fla., who attended the RNC with the Junior State of America organization, said he'd like to serve as a delegate on the convention floor, and thinks he could do as good a job as the Republican Party elders.

“The reality of it is actually the younger Republicans are more active and we’re more informed than the senior ones,” said Laney. “But it’s hard, you know. There’s a senior kind of buddy group going on with all the delegates.”

Walking with Laney was Richard Corn, also a high school student attending the convention with the JSA.

Corn said the GOP’s lack of youth representation was a problem for the Party, and said the homegeneity of those on the convention floor was a manifestation of that.

A resident of Elko, Nev., Corn decried the lack of trust between old and young party members.

“It’s difficult for the younger people to get elected as a delegate,” Corn said. “I mean, When you’re at the county and state party level people look at you and say, ‘He’s not experienced. We don’t know which way he’s going to vote. … We can’t trust him to represent us because we know we better — we’re the older ones in the party.”

In terms of racial and ethnic diversity, the majority of those on the convention floor did little to change the GOP’s overly white image. Only 36 of the 2,380 convention delegates were black.

Lenny McAllister, co-founder of the Hip-Hop Republicans, an organization that advocates for Republican-inspired solutions to important urban issues, said he wasn’t surprised by the makeup of those occupying the convention floor this week.

“Everybody knows that the Republican Party has to do a better job of diversity, and bringing in more African Americans, minorities,” McAllister said.

However, McAllister added that he didn’t necessarily consider the front-and-center Republicans on the floor an entirely accurate representation of the party’s membership, citing economic hardship and the cost of attending the convention as possible reasons why perhaps the crowd wasn't more diverse.

“The people here are going to really wealthy people and retirees, people who’ve been planning this trip for a year or maybe two years,” he said.

That said, McAllister praised his fellow Republicans for the great reception he and fellow members of the Hip-Hop Republicans have received this week.

“People have embraced us; they really want to be involved,” he said. “I’ve spoken to everybody, senators walking down the hall, and they want to increase the percentage of people in color.”