I think it's the other way around.
America is obsessed with race and will do anything it can to try to expunge its sense of collective guilt by signalling its current idea of virtue whenever possible. Including being irrational and pretending that some murders are worse than others.
All murders involve hate (pain exception). Why? Because to commit a crime of any kind, one piece of it is about the state of mind of the criminal. That's called mens rea (Latin). If your intent is not murderous, it's not murder. If it is, and you complete your act (actus reus), you are culpable.
Ahmaud Arbery would be as dead today if he was killed because it was thursday. The crime would have been murder. The criminals would face the same punishment, as they should.
Nothing is achieved by calling it a hate crime. It's simply adding a description to something which is already embedded in the conviction.
You are right that you are unlikely to change my mind. But of course, I am entirely supportive of incarcerating people who kill others for racial reasons. It's certainly one supposed justification malevolent people give for doing wicked things. I'd call it murder. I don't need an adjective.
The same sorts of things happens here. But I don't think the sense of collective guilt is quite the same, nor the obsession with race, nor the relentless pursuit of the same methods of dealing with these issues, nor the unceasing hope, regardless of experience, that focussing on race will cure the problem (it hasn't and it won't).
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