ABSTRACT
Today, at the 60th anniversary of the political memoir Black Like Me, by John Howard Griffin, we find ourselves in an opposing historical moment. While Griffin was praised by racial justice advocates of his time for adopting a Black identity to testify to rampant Southern racism, claiming such an identity today would be deemed impermissible cultural appropriation. Much of this dramatic shift is attributable to changing historical conditions for racial minorities, but not all; nor are such historical shifts themselves beyond analysis. Drawing on Isaiah Berlin's distinction between positive and negative freedom, this essay explores the evolution of prevailing norms of freedom. We have moved from an understanding of freedom as “negative,” as protection from interference, to a “positive” one that defends cultural property from outsiders. Although Griffin is remembered now chiefly for his contribution to positive racial equality, he was also a novelist involved in free speech litigation and a passionate defender of negative freedom. A champion against censorship, Griffin would staunchly have resisted 21st-century incursions on free speech, likely seeing them as their own kind of assault on equal rights.
