My understanding, being from the bigot-rich south is that “Hate Crime” labeling is in place not to make it worse that you attacked someone due to a hatred for their race, sexual orientation, etc. but as an aid to prevent crimes being overlooked because of a prevailing acceptance of such behavior by the larger communities in which they occur. Before hate crime legislation it was easier for a local podunk Sheriff to simply say “ah well, that boy got killed, but he was just a ##gger in the wrong part of town” or “if he wasn’t a ##ggot no one would have bothered him”. It’s the “Good 'ole Boy” mentality which is prevalent in the backasswards parts of America.
(That’s not a slam, it’s a fact that surrounds me in the very state in which I live. I’m neither black, brown, nor gay… just a plain white-bread boy brought up baptist, turned agnostic… but it still turns my stomach to know it’s still tacitly accepted even in some of the more progressive cities here and blatantly accepted out in the sticks)
