What's in a hero?

We all read about "heroes", watch movies about "heroes", and even have some "heroes" of our own. Heroes can be sports superstars, relatives, comic book superheroes, firefighters, and much more. But what exactly defines a hero? What defines heroics?

Heroics can be defined on many different levels. Sure, your dad doesn't save the world from Lex Luther, but he makes you dinner, loves you, and hangs out and plays with you. Personal heroics can be even more meaningful than crazy things you hear on the news that people did. The thing is, naturally, people tend not to appreciate the things that we receive everyday, we take them for granted. Therefore, personal heroics are easily unnoticed.

Another type of hero more closely resembles the superheroes we think of from comic books and movies, Superman, Spiderman, among others. They sacrifice themselves for the greater good of humanity, often because they have a rare power or excess of money that makes it possible to be a superhero. They take their fortunes and use them in such a way that helps society.

The reason I didn't mention Batman in the last paragraph is because there is a debate on whether vigilante justice is moral or not. With the superheroes mentioned above, they are either saving people from natural disasters or battling an obvious supervillian. Batman is using his individual wealth to beat, tie up, or even kill street thugs in an attempt to avenge the killing of his parents by thugs. This vigilante debate has come up often in the news, with Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, and Bernard Goetz and the three young men he shot on a subway. I'm sure there are more examples, I'm just not aware of them.

Ultimately, there is a huge gray area between what is right and wrong in these kinds of situations. More often than not, taking someone's life, no matter how thuggish and scary they look, is not justified. If they truly are deserving of the capital punishment, the court system will decide that in a fair manner.

Another topic often brought up in these vigilante crimes is race and supremacy. Usually, it is a white male hurting a black male. The usual argument is that the black male would've caused harm onto many others if the white man hadn't taken action. Whether we like it or not, or are even aware of it, the pre-dispositions all of these white male vigilantes, as well as you and me, have some factor into the crimes. In movies and music, as well as other pop culture venues, black males are often depicted as gang members, street criminals, and just general thugs. An interesting example of this is that of black Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman. Sherman, who, after making a game saving play in the NFC Championship game, went on a post game tirade to a reporter about how he was the best in the league and nobody should try to throw the ball his way. Sherman was instantly tabbed as a useless thug and bad guy. Interestingly enough, Sherman graduated from high school with a 4.1 gpa and then went to Stanford where he played football and earned a 3.9 gpa. In a different interview, Sherman was asked this:
"All of you football guys going into the strip clubs, and throwing... raining down on these strippers. I think that's a bad example for our young ladies. How can we stop that? I think it's a bad example that we're setting for our young girls that they need to be strippers."
The reporter was obviously hoping for an answer from him that made him seem even more like a thug, as the question itself implies he enjoys spending time at strip clubs. Sherman answers beautifully:
"I've never gone to a strip club and thrown money, so I couldn't tell you. I guess, uh, trying to understand that there are other avenues and other ways you can make money, that women can do anything they want in this world. You can go out there and be a CEO of a company, you can go out there and like I said, same can be said for kids in the inner city, that the ceiling is limitless and don't limit yourself to those possibilities and those circumstances."
Aside from Sherman's excited and energetic and understandable (considering he had just helped his team reach the Super Bowl) post game rant, he comes of as a smart and caring individual. In the end, though, he was categorized because he looked the part of a thug, which is exactly how the media portrayed him. Sherman, to me, is a hero (despite his playing for the Seahawks). Someone who overcomes the odds against him and uses his smarts to enhance his image and to disprove the pre-dispositions.

The two other superheroes I left out of the earlier paragraph are Captain America and Iron Man. This brings us to the issue of perspective. both Captain America and Iron Man help fight the "bad guys" in wars. However, to the bad guys, they are the bad guys. The same is true about Superman and Spiderman, but their bad guys are contained to a very small constituent who are being bad for personal gain. In this case, Iron Man and Captain America are at times against multiple countries, making their heroic deeds far less heroic for many people.

In the end, the concept of heroes is a very mushy area that is highly debatable and opinionated, and there is not one good definition or example that is complete.