“What’d’ya mean, slightest of rumors? Half the weirds I run into are
interested in the outfit. Get two or three intellectuals, scientists,
technicians, or what have you, together and they start knocking themselves
out on the pros and cons of the Movement.”
Larry Woolford stared at him. “Are you kidding, Sam?”
The other was mystified. “Why should I kid you? As a matter of fact, I was
thinking of doing a column one of these days on Voss and this Movement of
his.”
“_Voss_ and this movement of his!”
“Sure,” Sam said, “he’s the top leader.”
“Oh, great,” Larry growled. “Look, Sam, eventually there is probably a
story in this for you. Right now, though, we’re trying to keep the lid on
it. Could you brief me a little on this Movement? What are they trying to
put over?”
“I seem to spend half my time briefing you in information any semi-moron
ought to be up on,” Sam said nastily. “However, _briefly_, they’re in
revolt against social-label judgments. They think it’s fouling up the
country and that eventually it’ll result in the Russkies passing us in all
the fields that really count.”
“I keep running into this term,” Larry complained. “What do you mean,
social-label judgments, and how can they possibly louse up the country?”
Sam said, “I was present a month or so ago when Voss gave an informal
lecture to a group of twenty or so. Here’s one of the examples he used.
“Everybody today wants to be rated on a (1) personal, or, (2) social-label
basis, depending on which basis is to his greatest advantage. The Negro
who is a no-good, lazy, obnoxious person demands to be accepted because
Negroes should not be discriminated against. The highly competent, hard
working, honest and productive Negro wants to be accepted because he is
hard-working, honest and productive—and should be so accepted.
“See what I mean? This social-label system is intended to relieve the
individual of the necessity of judging, and the consequences of being
judged. If you have poor judgment, and are forced to rely on your own
judgment, you’re almost sure to go under. So persons of poor judgment
support our social-label system. If you’re a louse, and are correctly
judged as being a louse, you’d prefer that the social dictum ‘Human beings
are never lice’ should apply.”
Larry said, “What in the devil’s this got to do with the race between this
country and the Russkies?”
Sam said patiently, “Voss and the Movement he leads contend that a
social-label system winds up with incompetents running the country in all
fields. Often incompetent scientists are in charge of our research;
incompetent doctors, in charge of our health; incompetent politicians run
our government; incompetent teachers, laden with social-labels, teach our
youth. Our young people are going to college to secure a degree, not an
education. It’s the label that counts, not the reality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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