Have you ever noticed that superheroes of color always seem to fold when a villain threatens their community — but white heroes never do?
The superheroes of color? You mean like Martian Manhunter (green) ... or Jemm (red) ... or Kilowog (orange)... Or Impy, The Impossible Man (mostly green, but can change somewhat, and he isn't much of a hero, usually)... Superheroes are very colorful.
Blue Marvel, Static Shock, Black Lightning — the moment someone says "stop fighting or your people get hurt," they back down. Batman gets that same threat and fights anyway. Superman, Wonder Woman — they never stop. The story calls that heroic.
Did you read the original Milestone run of
Static back in the 90s? He was possibly the most rounded character in comics, seriously. He did back down sometimes, and sometimes struck out with redoubled fury when "his people" were threatened; he was realistic, really. One of the best written characters of the time, in fact.
Or Icon, who ... well... he was not human but looked like a black man, and was talked into becoming, well, the Superman of the setting. In his first outing, the entire military of Dakota turns its guns on him as he tries to help fight a villain called "Payback." His response? "This kind of thing doesn't seem to happen to Superman..." and he just bulls through to stop the bad guy after TRYING (and failing) to explain.
An interesting side note - in the Milestone setting, and the city of Dakota, Superman is a fictional character. During the "Worlds Collide" event, when Superman appears in Dakota, Blood Syndicate member Holocaust greets him with: "Does Clark Kent know you're wearing his underwear?"
But back to your question, it speaks to character motivation.
Batman is motivated by JUSTICE. He doesn't really worry about communities except as an afterthought. Threaten Gotham, he just works harder to bring you down. Threaten the world and he'll probably call for backup to bring you down.
Superman has backed down in the past, when the threat was too great - he always wins in the end, except when he was very briefly killed, but he does back down. Sometimes as a ruse, true but he does.
Wonder Woman is a warrior - backing down is only an option when commanded to do so by a superior, or if needed to regroup and strike back (and she has in the past).
I don't know Blue Marvel at all.
Black Lightning did not back down when he was younger but in the stories where he is an adult with a family, he also knows his powers have limits and is much more cautious and less headstrong (he also was mentored by Batman and learned to curb his responses by seeing when and how Batman reacted - check out the old runs of
The Outsiders).
Luke Cage was very much like Black Lightning (in fact there were accusations that they were the same person with different powers at one time) but he's taken a darker turn lately from what I've read.
