Larry Woolford stared at him. “Are you kidding, Sam?”
The other was mystified. “Why should I kid you? As a matter of fact, [pg 040] 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.”