Sometimes, knowing history can be a burden. It is hard enough, too, being Catholic. Much of my opinion on how the Church is perceived in popular culture is, admittedly, based on stereotypes. To many, Catholicism is too dogmatic and institutional. American society, supposedly, is different. We ended racism, did we not? When we force ourselves to think about the problems of the past, we like to tell ourselves that we have become enlightened to the point where we do not let our biases dictate how we look at anything, be it people of other races or religions. Though The Banker (2020) does not deal with faith, it does underscore a painful reality that, not too long ago, Americans discriminated against one another, in this case in housing and banking, on the basis of all manner of imagined categories like the importance of the color of one’s skin. This review is not intended to use this film to shine a light on today’s problems, but maybe it will get you to reflect on how far we still have to go.

That distance between America’s ideals and its treatment of its citizens is apparent early in Bernard Garrett’s (Anthony Mackie) life in The Banker. Growing up in Willis, Texas, in 1939, the young Bernard (Jaylon Gordon) shines shoes outside a bank while secretly recording the financial conversations he overhears. His father (Gregory Alan Williams) recognizes his intelligence but bluntly warns that a Black man in Texas will never be allowed to use it as freely as a white man. By 1954, Bernard has moved to Los Angeles with his wife, Eunice (Nia Long), and their son, determined to build wealth through real estate. He identifies an apartment building near a prosperous African American neighborhood whose residents have money but few housing options because segregation keeps them out of white areas. Bernard lacks enough capital to buy and renovate the property, but Irish immigrant Patrick Barker (Colm Meaney) is impressed by his calculations and helps arrange financing. Barker later becomes Bernard’s partner and serves as the public face of their investments because Bernard’s race would close doors before he could even make an offer. The arrangement prospers until Barker dies suddenly. Because Bernard’s name is absent from the paperwork, Barker’s widow refuses to honor the partnership and offers him only a fraction of what he believes he is owed. Bernard responds by thinking bigger. With the help of Eunice, he approaches wealthy nightclub owner Joe Morris (Samuel L. Jackson), whose flamboyant personality clashes with Bernard’s seriousness but whose money makes him an ideal partner. Bernard proposes purchasing the Bankers Building in downtown Los Angeles, an expensive commercial property occupied by banks that would scarcely give men like Bernard and Joe an appointment. There is one obvious problem: two Black businessmen cannot openly negotiate the deal in the racial climate of the period. Their solution is Matt Steiner (Nicholas Hoult), a white working-class acquaintance with little financial expertise. Bernard and Joe transform Matt into the apparent head of their company, drilling him in mathematics, real estate, golf, clothing, and etiquette until he can convincingly move among wealthy white businessmen. Bernard and Joe, meanwhile, remain behind the scenes, sometimes disguising themselves as a janitor and chauffeur so they can accompany Matt without revealing who actually controls the enterprise. The deception works. Matt negotiates the purchase of the Bankers Building, and the partners expand rapidly, eventually controlling an enormous portfolio of Los Angeles properties. Bernard also uses their investments to open housing in previously segregated neighborhoods to African American tenants, turning profit and integration into parts of the same strategy. Success, however, draws Bernard back toward the injustice he remembers from Texas. He decides to buy the Mainland Bank in his hometown so that Black residents who have been denied conventional loans can obtain financing for homes and businesses. Joe considers the plan unnecessarily dangerous, but Bernard persuades him to participate. Once again, Matt must appear to be the owner while Bernard and Joe secretly provide the money and direction. The bank’s former owners insist that Robert Florance Jr. (Scott Daniel Johnson) retain a position there, and Florance soon notices that the institution has begun approving loans for African American customers. His suspicions eventually lead him to discover Bernard and Joe’s involvement. With federal scrutiny looming, Matt proposes purchasing a second institution, the Marlin Bank, and temporarily moving loans there. Bernard and Joe distrust both the plan and Matt’s growing confidence, but the up-and-coming businessman persuades them to proceed. The arrangement deteriorates quickly. Matt, now exercising more authority than his experience warrants, mishandles the second bank and accepts a package containing loans that violate federal banking regulations. Bernard and Joe scramble to repair the damage at enormous cost. Matt then makes matters worse by using Mainland Bank to purchase bad loans from Marlin at face value, crossing from reckless management into fraud. Federal authorities close Mainland, and Bernard and Joe are arrested. Faced with the possibility of a lengthy prison sentence himself, Matt accepts a plea agreement and testifies against the two men who trained him, claiming that they manipulated him. Before Bernard appears before a Senate committee, he quietly protects what remains of his family’s future by having Matt purchase two homes in the Bahamas with money Bernard has set aside. Bernard then refuses to use his testimony merely to save himself. Instead, he tells the senators that the case is about something larger than banking regulations. African Americans have been denied access to the loans, property, and capital that allow families to build wealth, leaving them excluded from opportunities routinely available to white Americans. Bernard and Joe are convicted and serve prison sentences, while the business empire they constructed is largely dismantled. After their release, however, Bernard, Eunice, and Joe arrive in the Bahamas, where the two homes Bernard preserved are waiting for them.

Their material losses are enormous, but The Banker closes without allowing their setbacks to erase what they accomplished. They exposed how supposedly neutral financial institutions could reinforce racial barriers, helped African American families gain access to homes and businesses, and demonstrated that the people excluded by prejudice were never lacking in intelligence or ability. From a Catholic perspective, that last point provides an obvious bridge to human dignity. Bernard’s neighbors do not acquire worth when a bank finally agrees to lend them money. They possessed that worth all along. The injustice lies in a society constructing categories that prevent it from recognizing what was already there: actual people with the same fundamental dignity and rights as anyone else. As crazy as this comparison might sound, the film reminds me of the history of settlement in the Americas. By the time European colonization got underway in earnest, two major branches of Western Christianity were sending people across the Atlantic Ocean: Catholics and protestants. There is another stereotype that depicts Catholic colonies as uniquely cruel toward non-white populations because of brutal labor systems, slavery, and religious coercion. Such claims became part of the so-called “Black Legend,” anti-Spanish and often anti-Catholic propaganda used especially by Spain’s protestant rivals. The reality was considerably more complicated. Slavery certainly existed in Spanish colonial holdings, and racial hierarchies remained real, but Spanish law and Catholic institutions afforded enslaved people legal avenues toward manumission and incorporation into colonial society that differed substantially from the racial system that developed in British North America. Enslaved Catholics could marry sacramentally, appeal to ecclesiastical and civil authorities, purchase their freedom, and seek enforcement of promises of manumission. Spanish Florida provides an especially striking example of the difference. Enslaved Africans escaping the British colonies could receive their freedom by embracing Catholicism and pledging loyalty and service to the Spanish Crown. Near St. Augustine, this policy eventually produced Fort Mose, the first legally sanctioned free African settlement in what is now the United States. Its residents were formerly enslaved Africans who had become Catholic and were functioning members of Spanish colonial society. What I am talking about is integration, imperfect though the historical reality often was, and the film underscores how largely absent it remained from the United States in the mid-twentieth century.

The Banker was made roughly sixty years after the period it depicts, but discrimination remains a part of American society. I feel blessed to belong to a Church whose teaching insists that every person possesses equal human dignity and that discrimination in fundamental rights on the basis of race or color must be eradicated. Though the film is not about Catholicism, I can hear echoes of Bernard’s final speech in the Church’s teachings on these matters.