That sorta makes sense, but I'd imagine that most of the fear of those that fit the selection criteria is caused by the charge of a hate crime itself, or they're just paranoid.
No, it's not based on paranoia. How did you feel after 9/11? Scared, I imagine. Angry. Americans had been targeted
for being Americans, by an outside group who hated us. That's why we were all so frightened. It didn't matter that our odds of being killed by terrorists were smaller than our odds of being hit by lightning. We were afraid because we'd been selectively targeted.
Similarly, Jews after the Holocaust were terrified of a repeat of the Holocaust
because they had been selectively targeted for being Jews. They weren't worried about another World War, even though the war had in total killed a great many people at random.
Otherwise (I'd imagine, I could be wrong), you can't exactly tell what's a hate crime and what's not. I could go mug the first person I see and confess that I targeted them specifically because of their hair color, but that would be total nonsense. How do people judge something like that?
...dude, if you're a member of a targeted minority group,
you know it. You're a white guy, right? Try walking through a bad neighborhood in Chicago at night. You'll be targeted because of your race.
Now imagine that feeling all the time.
A hate crime has to be
proven to be a hate crime. They tend to be obvious. When a gay guy gets hitched to a trailer by a bunch of men and dragged to death, that's probably going to be easy to prove. When eyewitnesses and acquaintances report homophobic behavior, that makes it easier.
The hair color supposition is an example of a common misunderstanding in the field of rights. The reason killing on the basis of hair color probably wouldn't be called a hate crime (more of a bizarre psychosis) is because, historically, people of a certain hair color have not been oppressed or endangered by a majority group.
This is not true for immigrants, Black Americans, GLBT individuals, women, or many other minority groups.