SCP-818: The Ongoing Project of Racialisation

Content Note: Quotations of Racial Slurs, Images Depicting Racial Fetishisation as well as Torture Scars and Discussion of Corpse Abuse, Medical Racism, Self Harm and Slavery

I have once again managed to have a topical essay out at around the right time. No not Valentine’s Day, this is not in the slightest bit romantic. But in the US, it is now Black History Month, although the UK’s is in October. So, now is the perfect time, along with the other 11 months of the year, to talk about the history of black medicalisation and how it is still ongoing to this day. As well as its relation to SCP-818, the story we covered last time, in the most awful of ways.

The Invention of Race

The topic of race, how it was invented, enforced and continues to impact racialised minorities has been the subject of a plethora of think pieces, essays, books and more. Even solely focusing on one narrow aspect would take thousands of pages that I do not have, despite me writing more than I usually do. Therefore, this cannot be a comprehensive overview, but rather is the relevant highlights from the history of medical racism.

One of the first examples of academic racial categorisation was in the 1758 Systema Naturae by Carl von Linné or Carl Linnaeus^.[1] You may know him as the father of modern taxonomy, who termed the species name Homo Sapien. Though he split Homo Sapiens into four further sub-categories, Europeans, Americans, Asiatics and Africans. Guess which one the Swedish taxonomist thought was superior?

This was hotly followed in 1775 by Johann Blumenbach’s expansion into five racial categories. Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American and Malay. Blumenbach like his predecessor was called the progenitor of a discipline too. Though his epithet is the Father of Racial Science. A nickname that most would avoid but not Blumenbach.

The basis for the categorisation of race started off as nothing more than a differentiation of skin colour, something which still exists to this day. Though later in the 19th century, physiognomy would serve as the basis for a lot of racial science.^[1] From this would spring all sorts of judgements about culture, intelligence, personality, strength, and medical issues too. And this horrible application of colour theory, blossomed in the Atlantic Slave Trade.

Rana Hogarth in her fantastic book argues that this period of racial pseudoscientific medicine was not solely due to the innate racism of the time.^[2] Instead many colonial doctors wished to elevate their status and notoriety by being one of the premier professionals to treat black slaves for white plantation owners. As Hogarth so eloquently phrases it, the clinicians of the time period:

“Shared a faith that understanding blackness within the field of medicine would yield generous benefits to both those who subjugated and profited off of black people’s bodies and those who treated them”^[2] (Page XV)

Like in every other time when science becomes entangled with profit motives, prestige chasing and celebrity status, this birthed harmful practices and misinformation. One of these Hogarth focuses on is yellow fever, a scourge of the Americas during European colonialism.^[2] During this time, it was believed black people were immune to yellow fever, whilst white people were exceptionally vulnerable to the disease. Many hypotheses were floated, from thicker skin, more amiable climate, to an interaction of genetics and temperature shielding black people.

This is complete and utter nonsense. There was some, limited evidence, of enslaved native Africans dying at a lesser frequency to white people but this can be explained pretty simply.^[2] If you contract yellow fever as a child, you are vaccinated for the rest of your life. Like chickenpox, it is also less severe in children than adults. Furthermore, the only reason yellow fever was in the Americas was because of the slave trade importing it from African outposts to American colonies. In other words, the black slaves likely already had immunity from childhood. It had, quite literally, nothing to do with innate racial differences and everything to do with geography.

But such intricacies did not stop race scientists from using this difference to benefit white supremacy.^[2] Black men would make perfect soldiers and black women would make perfect nurses precisely because of this erroneous invulnerability. There were even multiple examples of white abolitionists pleading with freed black people to take care of towns struck by yellow fever. The final example included a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush. Truly, there was no end to the mental gymnastics white people used to justify explicit and discrete forms of black subjugation.

But even if black people did contract yellow fever they would simply blame them for being ill.^[2] They would say it was because of black people’s diets, because they were really mixed race (without any evidence), or because they didn’t exercise enough. Similar arguments were articulated to blame white commanding officers for not feeding black people enough plantains. Which as we all know, is the secret panacea doctors don’t want you to know about.

Rebranding Race Science

Towards the latter half of the 19th century, we started seeing more interest in specific examples of physiology to medicalise race. Benjamin Rush, previously mentioned hypocrite, invented a medical disease called Negritude.^[3] This “condition” was similar to leprosy and could be cured by skin whitening. Thank god nobody has ever propositioned bleaching as a cure for race again.

Samuel Cartwright, an American physician during the Civil War, coined another racialised disease.^[3] Dysesthesia Aethiposis. A humoral imbalance which explained why black people were just so lazy as well as why they must be ordered around and treated like children. Furthermore, this caused a thinning of the blood that led to a lower intellect in black people. All of this could only be cured by slavery, which he more politely termed as governance.

But do not think such terrible science is a thing of the past. BiDil, also known as Isosorbide Dinitrate with Hydralazine Hydrochloride, is a medication used for congestive heart failure and is termed by some as the first racialised drug.^[4] That is, the first drug to be marketed purely to a single race. But of course there is a wealth of scientific literature and reasoning behind this. After all, a pharmaceutical company would never use racial science to increase profit margins for an ineffective drug, would they? What do you think.

As Troy Duster notes in his essay on the topic, BiDil was first tested using a representative sample. This study found it to be no more effective than a placebo or other similar medications on the general population.^[4] However, in their limited sub-sample of black people, it appeared to perform better. Therefore, of course, the researchers conducted a double blind follow up study collating the effectiveness of BiDil divided by racial lines, and using placebos as well as similar drugs to test efficacy.

No wait, they just sampled black people and compared it purely against a placebo.

Let’s contrast the example I provided and their method. In mine, the researchers can compare BiDil’s significance both across racial lines and against different medications. Therefore, they could see if BiDil works better for certain racial categorisations and if any effect is mediated by specific chemicals in the drugs or extraneous variables they had not considered. In their study, they can see if BiDil is better than a sugar pill, in one section of the population.

This was deemed acceptable as there is a common belief that Black Americans possess a significantly higher incidence rate of heart failure. Although this difference could be as scarce as 1.2:1 according to some studies, well within the realm of social root causes.^[4] Adding to this there are more relevant categories to consider than race. Like age, as 93.7% of deaths from heart disease in the United States are from people over 65 years old. Coincidently, in this age bracket, racial differences are completely insignificant.

This modern race science contains startlingly similar echoes to that of the racial scientists of the 18th and 19th century. The motives are virtually identical, to increase a doctor’s prestige and financial situation, through the use of inaccurate technique and shoddy data. This kind of medical idiocy has also seeped into popular culture, as shown by this 2001 Financial Times quote:

“Illnesses that seem identical in terms of symptoms may actually be a group of diseases with distinct genetic pathways. This would help explain blacks’ far higher mortality rates for a host of conditions…Until now, these gaps have been attributed largely to racism in the healthcare sector and widespread poverty among African-Americans.”^[5]

To this day, racism pervades medical science and beyond. Doctors are not trained to see dermatological signs in dark skin, black women’s gynaecological or maternity care is treated as an experiment for medical students, and their literal pain is believed to be less significant than that of a white person. It is hard to overstate just how present this kind of medicalisation is and how often white institutions seek any excuse for it that doesn’t result in their accountability. Something which apparently is true even in fictional worlds.

A Mirror To Reality

You may be reflecting on how this history relates to SCP-818 in ways more specific than the obvious broad strokes. So let’s dig down into a few specifics of the history I mentioned, starting with the justification and reasoning for racial science being used by medical professionals.

Most historical and contemporary utilization of racialisation in science is employed in some way to profit the scientists who wield it. Be it with monetary, social, academic or militaristic incentives. The final category is the one that applies most to SCP-818. It is clear in the text itself, as well as the general knowledge of how other ontokinetics are treated in further stories, that they wish to use 818 to benefit the Foundation.^[6] Likely to fight horrific monsters and contain them, or to supply the Foundation with valuable items.

But 818 is incapable or unwilling to do so. I’d argue that latter, but the Foundation sees it as the former. They conceive it as insolence, as 818 being less intelligent, less able, lazy and unable to apply himself for their grand purpose. Sound familiar? Furthermore, the SCP Foundation, both in narrative and the community itself, is overwhelming white. It is a very white, nerd space with most of the writer self inserts at the time being white men. Meaning, in the narrative, it is a community of white doctors trying to weaponise and utilise a black body they have captured for their own purposes.

There is even a similar sense of black people having to prove themselves to their white compatriots. In the previous example with Benjamin Rush, one of the arguments he used to persuade freed black people to nurse white people was that it would prove the former’s competency and agency.^[2] This did not work, as one of the most famous writings to come out after, was about how black people allegedly stole from the ill white people and price gouged them for medicine. This was denied by the black abolitionists involved in the medical care. And I will believe them over racists any day.

There are similar echoes to this in SCP-818, to the desire by these physicians to see him prove his worth.^[6] Needless to say when he doesn’t, he is executed for his inability. I will explore the full implications of this later in the essay. Sufficed to say, the power to control life and death, to weigh the cost of a human life on its financial ramifications and alleged danger, is one with many echoes to plantation owners. And to modern medical establishments, who do not attend to black people as there is less monetary incentive for them to.

The other point I want to touch on in this part, is one I mentioned more briefly. One of the modern issues with white doctors treating black patients is the pernicious falsehood that they experience pain less severely than other races. This has its roots in slavery, where it was believed that due to thicker skin, amongst other things, black people needed lashings and other forms of torture to condition them correctly.^[2]

I feel like the connection between this, and 818 is pretty self-explanatory. We witness a black boy striking his head against a table, committing what I would label as self-harm and having scientists designate it a tantrum. Having seen first hand, little kids smacking their head against the floor or the wall or various objects to relay overstimulation, intense emotions or other issues, it would never enter my mind to call that a tantrum.

But such is the power of medical racism within the world. Something which most would otherwise see with empathy and grace, is seen as indolence and rebellion against the guiding hand of the white superiors. It’s not a child communicating his abject horror about being imprisoned, dehumanised and experimented on by scientists he does not know and who do not care to know him. It’s him being disobedient. And as is probably obvious now, nothing is more offensive to white people with power over black people than disobedience.

Denying Language

As shown with BiDil, when it benefits white scientists they will not employ science as rigorously to black people as they would to other white people. Though the previous example involved statistical malfeasance for profit, here I want to focus on non-verbal communication. As it happens when this was written (in 2011), non-verbal communication existed for developmentally delayed children.

These cover a vast range of practices that allow non-verbal kids to communicate to other juveniles and adults. This can range from simple sign language to relay words like “yes”, “no” or “more”, to picture boards where iconography can show the child’s desires, to speaking boards where they can type out sentences and gain artificial speech.

It is challenging work. It requires untold amounts of consistency, specialists and the balancing of numerous techniques to allow the child to communicate. But most of those affected, as well as parents, practitioners, arguably even the general population, would agree that granting these kids as much autonomy and expression as possible is a good thing. Therefore, why didn’t the SCP Foundation ever pursue this line of communication?

In universe, although this is relatively disputed depending on canon, the Foundation is meant to be competent. These are scientists hand picked by the corporation itself, the elites of their fields who are capable of tackling complex, abstract and mystical issues that plague the world. And they cannot even conceive of a basic method used by most Higher Support Needs schools. Something that would allow greater specificity and communication for the purposes of training 818.

So why? Why did the greatest minds within this universe, specialists in the field of developmental psychology, who know of phosphenes and autistic behaviours, who have tackled demons and angels and Gods and multiversal beings, never implement such obvious methods of alleviating their issues? Never mind considering the myriad of supernatural ways this could be achieved, especially since the Foundation has let SCP’s interact for a whole lot less. Well there are two reasons for this one which leads into the other.

818 is black.

And therefore, his voice doesn’t matter.

Racism combines with ableism to result in a tale as old as time. The scientists switch off anything that would apply academic rigour or care to this situation. Instead opting to maximise utility from a child with zero effort. To discipline him more like you would a dog than a human being.^[6] Not only because it would cost more to have specialists, but because it would lend their weapon a voice. He would have ideas, and autonomy and the ability to speak about his discomfort. However, the fact of the matter is, he already does possess a means of communication. It just hurts him to do it.

But there are further layers to this racist malpractice. This is what I would characterise as testimonial injustice. As explained by Alastair Wardrope, testimonial injustice is when individuals are unable to voice claims about their own experience.^[7] It is a form of epistemic injustice, where language and communication is barred or utilised in a manner to oppress minority groups.

He applies testimonial injustice to a more discrete form, where language for communicating experiences is barred from those who would require it most. How medical and academic gatekeeping, prevent people from knowing of different terms relevant to their experiences of various conditions.^[7] In doing so, it silences dissent from the people most effected by medicalisation to speak out about the harm of current practices. As well as to understand their own health conditions in their own framework, away from monopolistic institutions.

SCP-818, however, experiences the most fundamental form of testimonial injustice. He is unable to communicate primary facts about his life to those around him and is not provided the most simple of methods possible to do so.^[6] This leads to a disbelief towards accounts of harm or care required, as we have seen previously.^[7] But it also degrades 818’s ability to define his own personhood. To reason and engage with his own identity to the outside world. For most in the real world, this is generally a pervasive part of their medical history that defines much of their life, though not the entirety of it.

But for 818, he doesn’t get to communicate anything about his identity. We know nothing of him from him, because his testimony is considered unimportant. He is stripped of any ability to self-identify and what little we do learn is incidental. He likes the colour green, he enjoys drawing, he finds fun in order and creating shapes. But none of that reveals his deeper personality. My personal interpretation that he is kind, strong and a wellspring of emotion is merely that. Interpretation.

I believe any child who manages to deal with severe isolation and experimentation for as long as he did is a strong person. I believe any kid who mourns the death of a person they met a couple of times but became attached to, demonstrates a deep level of empathy and love . But that is me, imposing my analysis onto him, because there is no other way to assume his personality. And that to me is the cruellest part of this. We never get to actually perceive who 818 is. We never even know his name.

Controlling A Body

The final area I wish to touch on is necropolitics. A term and a book penned by Achille Mbembe, necropolitics in its most rudimentary form, is the ability for colonial powers to govern not only who lives and dies, but who is worthy of death and the manner in which they depart.^[8] Mbembe focuses on war for the most part, how conquering forces justify the capturing, detainment and murdering of numerous groups, especially racial, ethnic and religious minorities.

Whilst not a 1:1 with the SCP Foundation or 818’s situation, there are many distorted reflections to the issue at hand. First, let us get into the most apparent connection. How they replicate the imperialist use of prisons on the anomalous and 818 in particular.^[8] As Mbembe conveys, to justify state violence and counter terrorist measures, there must be some degree of othering through racialisation or an alternate marginalisation.

These measures in the modern era have gone from governmental initiatives to private corporations determining the means to detain. Therefore it is worth noting the Foundation is a private corporation with the ability to detain anomalous and non-anomalous individuals. The latter mostly through their D-Class, criminals used for experimentation. Criminality here meaning anything from death row inmates to just nebulously charged with a crime depending on the writer.

Within this modern era of corporatisation, carceral atrocities are no longer done through tyranny and religion.[8] Rather they are achieved with consumerist or even utilitarian ideals. Put differently, prisons presently exist to tap into a labour force for the creation of products, to use in the military or otherwise extract value from the prisoner’s bodies. Hence why the prison system is sometimes referred to as modern day slavery. Though this ignores all the other forms of slavery that still exist in the world, outside the purview of the Anglosphere.

The relation to SCP Foundation is clear. A private corporation that confines those it considers hazardous, even when they demonstrably are not. But even if they are, one can reasonably argue there is a difference between containment for the safety of the world and abject prison isolation to minimise costs whilst maximising obedience. The purpose of cramped rooms, with minimal furniture and no social interaction, is not because that is what is best for the living SCPs. It is because it is inexpensive, effortless and means they can maintain absolute control of their prisoners.

This control serves the Foundations ability to squeeze out labour and profit from their prisoners. They will wage their wars, perform their reconnaissance, or provide weapons to them. And when the Foundation cannot reap financial rewards, or worse yet, are actively are losing money due to an SCP “misbehaving”. Then they do what all imperial systems have done since the beginning. They commit murder.

This ability to execute that which dissatisfies them gets to the heart of necropolitics. Imperial and corporate powers get to define the worthiness of life by any metric they desire.^[8] And these metrics are frequently mixed with the biases of a society or group. It is not just that 818 was being a thorn in the Foundation’s side. It is also that he is black, he is autistic and he is a child. And because of all that, his life was deemed less worthy that his white, neurotypical counterparts, who are allowed to live. Even if they do not provide the Foundation with incentives.

When cuts must come, they cut those they value least, not just financially, but socially. They cut those they can most easily hate.

Controlling Bodies

But we cannot solely consider SCP 818 in this. Or rather, I would like to widen the scope a little. The carceral system, be it private or public, corporate or governmental, serves another purpose.^[8] Eugenics. The idea behind these systems is never reform, for how do you improve someone’s life in a tiny box, detached from the world, where you are degraded to a position below the lowliest of animals. It is to sequester people from life itself so you won’t get more of them.

This is a more subtle form of eugenic extermination. Instead of committing an active genocide, you simply imprison certain groups in squalor, both in prisons and in their own communities through tactics like red-lining and urbanisation. All of this with the ultimate goal of the eradication of any non-white subsect of the world, to proclaim the superiority of the white race. This will likely never kill off every racialised person. But it allows for the mythologised supremacy of white people to be maintained through violence. And to also get rid of other undesirables who happen to be white.

Now, to avoid an X-Men level analysis of marginalisation here, I will concede that the stakes are a little different. Ontokinetics and a lot of other anomalous people can cause active harm. However, so can non-anomalous humans. In real life. As well, most SCPs mentioned by the Foundation are able to be captured and contained. Unambiguously in the case of 818, his only deaths are associated with times of extreme mental stress, when either friends or relations died. He is about as dangerous as your average human with access to a weapon.

The fear is that he could kill more, but that fear is never substantiated. It’s purely a paranoia of annihilation, of the death of white men at the hands of a black boy that has been lurking in the white psyche for centuries now.^[8] And one cannot help but perceive the way anomalies are treated as a re-enactment of eugenics. It is not merely that they are considered a hazard based on actual assessment of their powers. Anything that is unusual is locked up and contained away from the non-anomalous because they may eventually constitute a threat to that which is considered normal.

Further, the SCP Foundation is one part of a larger whole. Other groups in lore, like the Global Occult Coalition, actively destroy any anomaly they capture. Be they human, animal, alien or object. Some enslave and experiment on the anomalies for their own purposes, like GRU-P, the Soviet Union version of the Foundation. It is not as if the Foundation is solitary. Rather, it is part of a global entangled web that seeks the extermination and subjugation of an entire group of people. People who can be equally dangerous and completely harmless.

The way these groups deal with the anomalous is not rigorous, objective or scientific. And it never could be. Any system relying on control over certain groups of people will inevitably fall into anxiety based eugenics. They will be fattened with violent re-enactments of the very terrors that established their institution, imposed onto those they fear most. A twisted first strike that will never end peacefully.

Usefulness After Death

However, of all the things Mbembe touches on, I think the most pertinent and the most horrific to me, is how necropolitics relates to the control of the dead body. One of the most important parts of any human society is the funerary rights, the ability to grieve and celebrate the lives of the dead. As well as to allow them now rest in peace. Imperialist powers disrupt these sacred practices for their own purposes.

This can be an act of dehumanisation, burying bodies in unmarked graves without care or even just abandoning their corpses to rot where they were slain.^[8] But more related to 818, is that remains are intermittently used for the purposes of the imperialist power. To serve their agenda and desires even in death. In the case of 818, his body is placed in a freezer, and researchers are allowed access to his remains for further research into ontokinetics.

As far as we know, 818 will never be buried. He will never receive a funeral, he will never be mourned, he will not rest in peace. His body will be subjected to permanent stasis, so even the release of decay and mayflies is not allowed to concern him. Even in death, the ultimate act of anyone’s life, when the body is at it’s most vulnerable, and the person’s will is unable to be expressed. He is debased. Reduced to flesh and viscera, like a blood sample on a slide. Something wholly based on real life history.

I cannot help but think of Saartje Baartman when writing about this. A Khoikhoi child, the indigenous people of South Africa and perhaps formerly known by the first name Ssehura. Unfortunately, much like 818, we do not actually know her actual name, but I will use Ssehura for the rest of this in an attempt to employ a proper name. Her life began tragically as she was enslaved by Dutch colonisers in her infancy after her mother died during childbirth and her father was murdered by her captors.

After being traded between different plantations, Ssehura was used as an attraction for a carnival show, due to her “exotic” features. So captivating was her body to the voyeuristic eyes of the paying white public that she was nicknamed the Hottentot Venus.^[9] She died at the age of 26 in 1815, in captivity and unable to secure her freedom. Her body was then buried in South Africa. In 2002. In the interim of nearly 200 years, Ssehura’s body was exercised for a extensive variety of purposes.

She was displayed in museums, in other carnival shows, and admired by private collectors.^[9] But perhaps most horrifically of all, her body was utilized by race scientists to compare her genitals to that of white women. Which then was employed to speculate about, amongst other things, the sexual primitivism of African people.

Put differently, her body was manipulated for the benefit of white people, both to gawk at and to advance scientific discovery. Though the words, advance, scientific and discovery are used extremely loosely here. And again, this was not stopped until 2002. I was born then, it is within my living memory.

What happened to 818, is paradoxically, a kinder version of the experiences of many black bodies to this day. Bodies routinely fetishised, humilated, dehumanised and experimented on for the titillation of white people. And entertaining the thought that 818 is technically lucky in this regard, is conceivably the most damning indictment this essay can muster.

A Butterfly’s Wing

To be honest with you, in writing this and researching this I got infuriated. Angered in a way I rarely do when writing these essays. I was, to some degree, aware of the history of racial medicalisation. I knew the broader strokes and some of the modern issues that black people faced when coming up against medical institutions. In fact, the reason I was aware of Ssehura was because of a YouTube video by a funerary reformist and death historian, Caitlin Doughty.

But still, even with that, going into this history and nigh a thousand pages on the horrors faced by black people to this day is maddening in all senses of the word. Especially in the current political climate within the West, of denying racist institutions, supporting violence against Palestinians, the Congolese, the Uyghurs and so many more people. It is exasperating to consider. Part of me hopes this essay might help in some small way to educate people, but that does not feel nearly enough.

And so, a small call to action. Please research local groups in your area, especially places like food banks, free law clinics, protest groups fighting for racial justice and more. Donate, advocate, educate and be educated, do what little you can or devote as much as you desire. There are also national and international organisations like Amnesty International, The Good Law Project or The Innocence Project. You do not need to quit your job and life, dedicating yourself exclusively to a cause. But awareness of your personal and political power are vital tools to fighting oppressive regimes.

It is only through uniting that we can dismantle the local, national and international power structures that dehumanise so many different variations of marginalised groups. And all I ask is you lend your support as best you can. Be it time, educating those in your life, donations or more.

Thank you so much for reading, I hope this has been illuminating for you. I will be back with an essay examining autistic medicalisation, as well as the intersection between blackness and disability.

If you found this piece insightful please consider donating to my Ko-Fi. You will get access to my essays early through my moon tier, and one time support will garner you access to behind the scenes notes and musings on academic papers I did not get to use anywhere else.

Let me know what you think below or on my Bluesky and until next time. Stay safe.

References

1. Witzig, R. (1996). The medicalization of race: scientific legitimization of a flawed social construct. Annals of internal medicine, 125(8), 675-679.
2. Hogarth, R. A. (2017). Medicalizing Blackness: making racial difference in the Atlantic world, 1780-1840. UNC Press Books.
3. Reiheld, A. (2010). Patient complains of…: How medicalization mediates power and justice. IJFAB: International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, 3(1), 72-98.
4. Duster, T. (2007). Medicalisation of race. The Lancet, 369(9562), 702-704.
5. Financial Times (London), March 9, 2001: 16
6. TroyL. (2011). SCP-818. Retrieved From: SCP Wiki
7. Wardrope, A. (2015). Medicalization and epistemic injustice. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 18(3), 341-352.
8. Mbembe, A,. (2019). Necropolitics. Durham: Duke University Press.
9. Qureshi, S. (2004). Displaying Sara Baartman, the ‘Hottentot Venus’. History of science, 42(2), 233-257