Spike Lee’s latest film and Uncle Nearest’s legal drama are cut from the same Kente cloth. This isn’t just about two stories; it’s about how Black ownership, once it reaches a certain height, becomes the target of subtle erasure, hostile takeovers, or narrative control.
Spoiler Alert: Art Imitates Life. Highest 2 Lowest is about David King (Denzel Washington), a visionary who builds a company from nothing. He leads with conviction, sacrificing comfort to chase purpose over profit. It’s a moral reckoning in an economy addicted to exploitation. It’s less Empire, and 100% a straight-up Spike Lee Joint, rich in brotherhood, fatherhood, and legacy.
Meanwhile, in the real world, Fawn Weaver revives the buried legacy of Nathan “Nearest” Green, the first known African-American master distiller. She built a premium brand rooted in history and unapologetic ownership. In July 2024, New Markets Support Company filed a lawsuit alleging Uncle Nearest defaulted on $108M in loan terms. The legal push seeks to remove Weaver from day-to-day operations, citing financial mismanagement. But critics argue it’s a veiled attempt to seize control of a Black-owned success story. If she loses control, her founding vision risks getting whitewashed.
What’s at stake isn’t just a company; it’s the narrative. She was bottling a 3x solution to the loan rejection crisis, each sale a brick in the fight against the 8:1 wealth gap.
- Only 30% of family businesses survive into the second generation, 12% to the third, and a mere 3% to the fourth.
- 70% of wealthy families lose their fortune by the second generation, 90% by the third.
- Black entrepreneurs are 3x more likely to have business loan applications rejected than their white counterparts.
These aren’t just numbers. They’re red flags waving at the crossroads of ownership and erasure. If we don’t read the signs, we’ll keep repeating the cycle of building brilliance, then watching it get bought, broken, or buried.
From High Rises to Oak Barrels
Highest 2 Lowest is a visual sermon on what happens when what you bled for gets leveraged, mismanaged, or misunderstood by people who never paid the price. Same with Fawn. Uncle Nearest wasn’t just a liquor brand, it was a reclamation project, setting the record straight about Nathan “Nearest” Green the man who really taught Jack Daniel how to distill.
But now, between courts and clickbait, her empire is being treated like the Labubu craze: once priceless, now sold for a pittance by people who never knew its worth.
This is giving PTSD, because we’ve seen this before: Black Wall Street. Rosewood. Seneca Village. Whole communities were wiped off the map because their excellence couldn’t be contained or controlled. The story never changes. Only the setting does. And the Hollywood shuffle of studio execs claiming Black movies don’t sell, then underfunding the very films that prove them wrong time and time again. While Big Budget Blockbuster counterparts like The Fall Guy, Joker Deux, and Borderlands plop-plop-fizz-fizz flop even with heartthrobs and cookie-cutter plot lines.
Hijacking Black Excellence
It starts at a corner store or in a corner office, the dream often fades before it’s passed on. When we don’t protect our stories, our streets, and our businesses, we risk watching them rewritten by others.
David’s dream was on the verge of being sold out from under him in the film. Not because her failed, but because it succeeded too loudly. Just like in real life, the system doesn’t mind your brilliance, as long as it has you under its thumb. And like David, Fawn faces a choice: surrender the wheel for the sake of survival, or hold the line and risk being erased entirely.
Bottom line–this isn’t just a lawsuit about dollar signs. It’s a warning shot for every founder who dares to build with culture, clarity, and conviction. It’s about who gets to write the story. Ownership isn’t just having the idea; it’s defending the intention. And legacy is what survives after the checks clear and the headlines fade.
So yeah, pour that Uncle Nearest with three fingers, neat. Let Spike’s film simmer. Let that whiskey burn. Because in this game, standing still is just moonwalking backward. Keep rising.
Hailing from Chicago’s South Side, Pardé Bridgett is an award-winning ad writer, culture curator, and creative strategist.
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