Set in post-rebellion Los Angeles, Bebe Moore Campbell's latest novel, Brothers and Sisters, chronicles the struggles of the petit-bourgeois-aspiring-to-be Black national bourgeoisie in the banking industry. Echoing recent media coverage of Black middle class anger, Campbell paints highly paid executive characters who are followed around designer clothing stores like thieves, overlooked for their white companions by waitstaff in fancy restaurants when it's time to pay the check, and insulted by disgruntled bank customers who ask to speak with "the real manager."

But Brothers and Sisters offers a deeper and more insightful look into this anger, directed downward to Black proletarian nationals as well as upward to the white banking establishment. Their anger at the aforementioned and anecdotal racism is compounded by the very structural fetters to their becoming independent capitalists. And their contempt for "lazy" Black proletarians is tempered by their stronger opposition to the bank's discriminatory policies which sap money out of the ghetto and funnel it into the white suburbs in the form of loans and investments.

In the era of imperialism, in which the principal contradiction is between imperialism and oppressed nations, the national bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations plays a dual role in the revolutionary struggle. Campbell, by telling the story from the perspective of this social group, conveys both the reactionary and the potentially revolutionary character of the Black national bourgeoisie. Reactionary is their position as capitalists - they may prefer a Black-owned bank, but they want to own it, run it, and profit from it - at the expense of the proletariat here and in the Third World. Potentially revolutionary are their sometime tactical alliances with proletarians and feminists against the ultimate power-holders - the imperialist bourgeoisie.

As the bank comes under fire from critics charging discrimination in lending, and the city experiences the tension of the second impending Rodney King pig trial, the bank president launches a "Diversity Program." Central to the program's success is the installation of a Black man as regional manager. While he is promised the presidency of the bank down the road, he is well aware that his position rests tenuously on the goodwill of his white benefactor.

One of the principal relationships in Brothers and Sisters is the difficult friendship between a naive white woman named Mallory, who slept her way up the bank's corporate ladder with a B.A., and a lesser paid Black woman named Esther who gets by on the strength of her M.B.A. credentials. Each questions how the other can be so angry (Esther) or so stupid (Mallory). In one scene:

"Mallory's voice rose. '... I never knew you were so bitter. I thought we were friends.'

"'Any black person in America who isn't bitter is either dead or psychotic. You're my friend if I smile at waitresses who ignore me and act like I don't see salesclerks following me around. Get this through your airhead: I'm not having as good a time as you are in this goddamned country.'"

When Mallory's corporate sugar daddy takes her for granted one too many times, she uses her new Black boss (Humphrey) as a weapon to make him jealous, taking him to a public party, and inviting him back to her house afterward. Gender and national loyalties are called sharply into question when Humphrey persists with Mallory after she dumps him and the scam is over. Mallory pays the price for wanting to retain her executive position and not offend Humphrey, by inevitably sending mixed messages to him when she turns down his repeated offers for dates.

Campbell expertly conveys the ugliness of romance power games, the ambiguity of a woman's "no" in the patriarchal matrix of eroticized dominance and subordination, and the deadly history behind a white woman's accusation that a Black man is harassing her sexually. Mallory learns a hard lesson in principal contradictions when Esther won't take her side against Humphrey. As she too has experienced the oppression of rape, and of sexual harassment in the workplace, it is not without some angst that Esther explains,

"'So few of us make it to the top. I can't knock him down.'

"'Do you know how it feels to be grabbed, to have your clothes torn? To have someone treat you like a piece of meat? We're both women, Esther.'

"'I'm a black woman,' Esther said slowly. 'There is a difference.'"

That lesson of principal contradictions is repaid 100 fold when Esther suspects her Black teller of stealing money, when in fact it is her white male colleague that's responsible for the embezzlement. In contrast to Esther's $65,000 a year career, the teller's position is the young woman's first precarious attempt to sever her reliance on the state and welfare. When the theft comes to light, the white man in charge looks at them both and sees simply, "Black women." And he fires them both.

The white supremacist corporate coup is completed when Humphrey too goes down in flames, the outcome of Mallory's appeal to a bigger patriarch (the bank's vice-president) to stop his behavior. As can easily happen when women attempt to stop individually perpetrated patriarchy by appealing to the state or other higher forms of male authority, the vice-president turns Mallory's charge of sexual harassment into an accusation of attempted rape. Mallory is shocked and furious for having been used as a pawn in bank politics, but anyone with a historical perspective on the gender privilege of white women in Amerika merely shrugs and asks, "What did you expect?"

Brothers and Sisters is an advance over the typical "political correctness" which portrays white men as the only power-holders, and everyone else as equally subordinate to them. Campbell shows, in spite of herself, that nation is the principal contradiction, understands First World women's gender privilege, and clearly promotes the interests of the oppressed nation bourgeois against imperialism.

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