The campaign to oust a white woman from her leadership role with the Africville Heritage Trust seems to be gaining some momentum in Nova Scotia.
A meeting on the matter attracted dozens of people in Halifax Tuesday night, the majority of which are upset that Rev. Carol Nixon, a white Anglican priest, was hired as the new executive director of the trust.
Nixon has held the position since July but the outcry over her role has sparked only recently.
Nixon told CTV News last week that she is saddened by the uproar, but she plans to stay on.
"It's disappointing, but understandable," said Nixon last Thursday. "Can I see the place that the people who raised this as a question are coming from? Yes I can."
But some members of the community say the decision to hire her smacks of an old-fashioned paternalistic attitude toward black Nova Scotians and it's unacceptable for her to hold the position of executive director.
"It is the opinion of this group that the present person who was hired, Carol Nixon, does not the have the prerequisites to be able to represent us, in as much as she is a white woman from outside our province who does not share our experiences and cannot speak for us realistically and cannot be the…executive director of an organization that represents the black community here in Halifax," said Burnely "Rocky" Jones, a member of the Ujamaa Association, at the meeting last night.
Nixon says she is surprised by people's reactions because she was told that race would not be a factor in the hiring process.
"They made it extremely clear to the white people on the board that they wanted to hire the best person for the job, and it didn't matter whether they were black, or whatever," she told CTV News last week.
But Jones said the board has missed the point of the organization by hiring Nixon.
"You would not ever put a man in charge of a woman's organization," Jones told CTV News last week. "However, people find it totally acceptable to put a white woman in charge of a black organization."
Jones says he hopes to meet with the Africville Heritage Trust and work out some kind of deal.
