The Scary Side of Democracy

Last night, I went to bed knowing that Donald Trump managed to win re-election. This morning, I woke up, and all I could think was: this is why James Douglas hated democracy.

Gov. James Douglas, the father of British Columbia, was a light-skinned Black man sent to Vancouver Island to establish a British colonial settlement. In 1851, when he assumed the governorship, there were less than 1,000 white people who called the territory home. Seven years later, he was instrumental in the migration of 800 Black people, all but banned from California, to the Island. They arrived in search of freedom from the racial animosity they faced in America and the promise of a better life, and equal political and economic rights as British subjects. They fled America, in other words, in search of the American dream.

The dream didn’t last long. Later that same year, the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush brought 30,000 pioneers, mostly white Americans, to Douglas’s hometown, the new El Dorado, completely remaking the settlement while working to undermine British jurisdiction in the region, and Douglas’s right to control them at all.

Douglas was a settler, not a hero. Nevertheless, he was trying his best to create a safe haven for people like him. He welcomed Black settlers, recognized Indigenous land rights, and even established a BIPOC police force, the Victoria Voltigeurs, surreptitiously referred to in dispatches back to Britain as “half-whites.” It was all a little much for the most racist people in town, who made up the majority.

Recognizing Douglas’s virtual autocracy in a colony ruled by the Hudson’s Bay Co. man and his work friends, making it hard to discriminate against and disenfranchise the racialized landowners, former slaves, mixed families and wanderers who enjoyed what he’d built on the Island, the American miners started clamouring for actual democracy.

Douglas, of course, was against it. It’s one thing to support the right to vote when everyone who gets a vote seems somewhat sensible. It’s something else entirely to know that, in a functioning democracy, the racists have the numbers to seize power, and you’re Black.

Doomed to exile otherwise, Douglas did his best to undermine the push for so-called responsible government, which he knew to be fuelled not by elevated thinking, but racism, entitlement and greed. He couldn’t really say that, though. Much of his business success came from sounding as white in his letters as those who received them. Famously self-serving and, by all accounts, a jerk, he tried to appeal to elitism, arguing that common folk didn’t know anything, least of all what they really wanted, which was to be governed by the ruling class.

Douglas was deeply disconcerted when Britain instructed him to establish an elected legislative assembly. He tried his best to rig it, but by then it was too late. The new ruling class didn’t like him, or listen to him. In 1861, members of Victoria’s Black community were banned from the volunteer fire department. By the late 1860s, most had moved or been driven away, including Douglas, who was thanked for his service and put to pasture in 1864. We are only recovering B.C.’s Black history now.

I don’t mean to sound undemocratic. There’s little doubt that having a say, however small, in one’s government beats having no say at all. But watching Donald Trump become the president, again, my mind drifted back to James Douglas.

’Twas ever thus.

On days like this, I know to stay out of the comments. They’re sure to be a cesspool for the next four years, at least. But I know that somebody will trot out that old Churchill chestnut: democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. Maybe so, and maybe there are better versions of democracy. Someone else, I’m sure, will be offended if I fail to mention first-past-the-post, or plurality runoffs. I’m an essayist, not a political scientist. My job as a writer is not to fix the problem, but to name it.

Rule by the people is only as good as the people. This morning, I find myself doubting the people. By all accounts, Donald Trump didn’t just win the electoral college this time: he won the popular vote. This is what the people want. The racism, fearmongering and politics of grievance are a winning combination in America, just as they’ve always been, just as this system has promised the ruling class since it began.

Some will say that Donald Trump’s re-election is the end of America. But it’s not. It’s the will of it, one must admit. Some will say Trump’s second term is proof that democracy is broken. I tend to disagree. The election of Barack Obama proved that it was broken; the rejection of Kamala Harris proved things have been set right. Black people, one has to infer, and for Black women one must infer twice as hard, are not supposed to win. Not even when their opponents are criminals, conmen or obvious autocrats, aiming to be just like Hitler, their hero.

The system prevails, yet again.

In 2016, I woke up the next day feeling disappointed, more than anything. Looking back now, I think this was naive.

Some part of me thought that the people had simply been tricked. But we’ve been through so many elections like this in the years since, not only down south, but up here.

The Conservative Party of BC imported Trumpism, and they nearly seized power. I’ve heard people say that some candidates’ racially insensitive remarks and even outright racial slurs were what British Columbians couldn’t abide.

This morning, I worry that what really happened was that they weren’t racist enough.

I worry about the next federal election, which looks like it might be a cakewalk for Pierre Poilievre, who employs the same playbook and has to be energized by fresh evidence that it works.

The demonization of immigrants, fear of the other, complete lack of love for the people who don’t look or think how the worst of us think they’re supposed to. It works, and I worry about where this country, this continent, or even the culture at large may be headed if this is democracy working.

This morning, I woke up afraid.