Martin Luther King Jr.'s Gadflies

 

Martin Luther King Jr. - Photograph from PennState University.

The concept of 'Gadflies' is the concept that caught my attention in this week's materials. A gadfly is a mosquito that lays or disturbs the horses. When I saw the photo of what a gadfly looks like, it reminded me of a fruit fly infestation that I had in my apartment last summer. I recalled using all kinds of tricks and tips to keep the fruit flies away but they kept reproducing, and I could not figure out how to end their invasion.

In the context of the "Letter from Birmingham Jail", a gadfly symbolizes those ideas or topics that challenge the status quo. My understanding of it is an idea that becomes a nuisance, something that society has no intention to deal with but that persists. This concept was originally brought by Socrates in his apology where he indicated that a certain gadfly, in this case, a thinker, was necessary to enlighten the society in the topics that would otherwise be kept away.

Truth can be uncomfortable, more so if that truth shakes us up from the inside. While many American homes watched the killing of George Floyd on video, one truth rose in our minds: this is not right. We all had to face one uncomfortable truth and this truth was that police brutality runs rampant in our cities and people of color in America are still targeted and profiled for crimes that their counterparts would not have been heavily punished for. 

The gadflies needed to stir the soup of the tension of last summer were the protests produced worldwide. People around the world not only noticed that the events that occurred were wrong but took a stand before injustice, decided to do something, and abandon what Martin Luther King called 'The nothingness". These people with their non-violent demonstrations placed themselves again in the middle of the negative peace and the political extremism. Just like Martin Luther King did during his life and career.

The kind of nuisance generated by the protests is generating changes. There is a call for the American people to review the role of the police in society and many police departments are considering inclusion and diversity to prevent situations like this from happening again. However, the Black Lives Matter movement did not eliminate racism and the many other issues attached to it. 

What the BLM movement did was to generate the tension and space for the American people to address the uncomfortable yet necessary role of race in our society. The gadflies work, and they do so not by eliminating the problem but by lifting those issues that were once under the table and putting them at the height of us, the spectators, so we can recognize them well.

Martin Luther King said, "...must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood". Societies need daring individuals, Socrates-like minds that are not afraid of labels or punishments in lieu of social justice. 

When something is morally wrong within the boundaries of the law, we are then called to question the foundations of such laws. We have a call not to simply be law-abiding citizens but to understand how the justice system seems to facilitate systemic racism; how societies choose to place certain minorities in certain neighborhoods to reduce their odds of success and progress, how to remind ourselves that economic growth does not necessarily require to damage our environments. 

All of these issues are like Socrates' gadflies, and we either choose to listen or to let them multiply and invade.