HALIFAX — The hiring of a white woman as executive director of the Africville Heritage Trust, a body created to redress the destruction of a Halifax-area black community in the 1960s, has generated a polarizing debate on race.

Burnley (Rocky) Jones, a Halifax lawyer and human rights activist, is calling for the dismissal of Carole Nixon after she was recently hired to help oversee the trust.

Jones said he believes the hiring process was flawed because the job wasn’t widely advertised and that Nixon’s hiring ignored the sensitivities of some in the local black community.

“How could a white woman from Ontario be able to explain what we would go through growing up as a black person in Africville, facing the kind of racism and degradation the people had to live through?” said Jones.

“It’s impossible for anyone without that experience to interpret that.”

http://www.capebretonpost.com/News/Canada---World/2011-09-17/article-2751962/Hiring-of-white-woman-to-help-oversee-Africville-Heritage-Trust-sparks-uproar/1