Based off the work of Isabel Wilkerson, will use the tenants of the racial caste system to analyze different health equity topics and become familiar understanding and using this lens as a way of critical analysis 

Tenants of Racial Caste System 

1. Divine Will: the stratification of races is beyond human control, either through divine ordination or natural law, specific cultural myths include the curse of Ham and the subsequent scientific fallacies regarding a hierarchy of races 

2. Heritability: social stratification is determined at birth by heritage and is immutable, i.e., the one drop rule 

3. Endogamy: controlling sex and marriage between races/caste, i.e., anti-miscegenation laws 

4. Purity and Pollution: the oppressor caste is clean/pure/normal/the default, and the oppressed caste is dirty/dangerous/othered, and that mixing is unnatural or harmful to the oppressor caste, i.e., Jim Crow, segregation of swimming pools, bathrooms, healthcare, etc. 

5. Occupational hierarchy: certain desirable and authoritative jobs are protected for the oppressor caste (seats of government, medical careers, law enforcement, C-suite, think the Flexner report, glass ceilings, and lack of diversity in medical providers) and certain undesirable and menial jobs are restricted to the oppressed caste (farm work, industrial work, military service etc.) 

6. Dehumanization: the denial of human dignity, individuality, and agency to the oppressed caste, i.e., slavery, red-lining, white-benefiting legal programs (i.e., GI bill, FHA, urban renewal etc.) many racial stereotypes regarding aggression, negligence, etc., medical gaslighting and inadequate pain treatment, medical experimentation  

7. Terror and Cruelty: a means of enforcing the caste system and controlling the oppressed caste by legal sanctioned or extrajudicial violence that is tolerated by society, i.e., lynching, the KKK, police brutality and murders, disproportionate police contact, prison industrial complex, medical experimentation (this one hits a couple of different boxes) 

8. Inherent superiority and inferiority: the oppressor caste is inherently superior to the oppressed caste, and that distinction is publicly maintained through restrictions of expression and the oppressor caste will intervene when those lines are crossed, i.e. driving while back, black folks being accused of stealing for being in luxury stores, black students/professors being accused of trespassing on university grounds, Black medical professionals being mistaken for custodial staff, etc.