Let's run a scenario past you: You're out somewhere with your pals, just hanging out, when all of a sudden someone gets mugged and you stop the mugger. Cool, right? You're a "hero" in someone'e eyes. You get interviewed by the police and a news group, and they ask if they can write an article on you and what happened. A few days go by and you see the article title and see "College Student Becomes a Hero and Stops a Mugging" and you are both excited and annoyed. You're more than just a college student right? You're a normal human being who happened to be in the right place at the right time in order to help out this person, but you ALSO happen to be in college.
This is a problem with the media and the society we live in today, they're the first to put on an extra label to people because they know that it'll get more views and more comments. If they say "Person Stops Mugging," then it might get a few reads and a few clicks on social media, but if they change it "Ex-Con, Muslim Man Stops Mugging" then it'll be bound to get more reads and views because now it seems more interesting. Even though they're the same story, the second just draws on the fact that the crime-stopper HAPPENED to be a Muslim man who was in jail once. They more than likely don't even care that a person did a heroic feat, all they care about is that someone who is a "minority" or a "social topic" is involved. Because now, they instantly have a story.
It's becoming more prevalent in the every day life. More and more news headlines are playing on the fact that the main subject of their article is Hispanic, a woman, part of the LGBTQ community, African-American, Muslim, "young", ex-con, or any combination of these. If you fit these criteria, it's almost guaranteed that those "identifiers" will be a part of your article headline--even if you're something more than that. If you're a doctor, who happens to be an African-American Woman and you save someone's life on a plane, your headline will read "African-American Woman Saves Life on Plane!" Then later in the article it'll read that you're a doctor of epic proportions. No where in this should it have to say the color of your skin, the way you live your life, or what you identify as. news reporters know that those things are what will make them more money.
This is a problem that needs to be addressed, because all this does in insight more prejudice against certain groups of people. If you always identify them by these non-defining characteristics, then they will only be seen as such. All it does is solidify that these specific people are only "good" in certain situations. This will then only allow people to believe that they are only capable of doing these good things when they know that it'll get them known. The act of putting extra labels on these people, that do extraordinary feats, is ridiculous. How would you like to only be known by the color of your skin, or the person that you love, or what you define yourself as, or what higher power you believe in? Give credit where the credit is due, because I can promise you that no one goes out of their way to help people just because it'll give others like them less hard of a time, they do it because they know that it is the right thing to do. Heroism has no face, no gender, no race, no religion, no past, it can be anyone, and those people should only be label as such; heroes.
