Yes, hate crimes. It's what you get charged with when you kill/hurt someone who belongs to a certain minority group, usually racial.

I think it's stupid.

Usually when people murder other people they hate something about them.
It may be their attitude, their actions, their race, their height, the fact that they are fat, the fact that they drive PT cruiser, the fact that they are Ravens fans... What's more, we can easily group them all into groups. Bald people. Fat people. And so on. Nearly every crime is a 'hate crime' then.

Yet we only ever hear this category apply very selectively to racial and religious minorities. I think it's best to drop the thing altogether, and judge the crime solely based on severity/brutality and other relevant circumstances (self-defense, etc).

I agree with odlov completely, they are not using this system correctly, and I am not sure that they can fix it to the point of it having a real worth.
Drop it.

SLAPPED, that makes sense.

It makes little to no sense on why this kind of crime exists, but some people are just downright racist.

Which is still retarded.

If a man kills a woman, who is to say he didn't do it because he secretly hates women? This whole thing is a mess.

hate crimes are crimes comitted against someone because of what they are-race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, etc..they are called hate crimes because the criminal hates that group, and that is the reason why they commited the crime..the idea of a hate crime does make sense and i should be used to identify that type of crime.

My thought process is this:

Legal System is for protecting and maintaining a nation.
One large reason for prison to keep the "bad guys" for lack of a better term off the streets.
A person who commits a "Hate" crime is more dangerous to the community, and therefore deserves more punishment.

Here is why:

If I hate my mom. She calls me names, is a jerk to me, never encourages me, never lets me do anything, and I get soo infuriated with her that one day I shoot her and kill her, this is a horrible crime, it's murder. BUT, I killed my mom, and I don't want to kill anyone else.

But if I see another guy (this isn't the same person, this is an entirely new case), and he is a black man, and I belong to the KKK, I could go over their screaming White Power, and he could do nothing wrong, and I kill him. This is a "Hate" crime because I killed him specifically due to his race. This act is a lot more serious, because this man is willing to go to extremes against an entire race rather than one person like an abusing mother or a cheating wife. The threat to society is much greater and the crime itself is much more gruesome if it's fermented simply due to one's race rather than character.

While I do believe people call crimes "hate crimes" when they really aren't because of ones race, the merit and ideology I do believe in, and legit "hate" crime, at least in my opinion, deserves harsher punishment.