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The term hate crime first appeared in the late 1980s in response to a racial incident in the white, working-class Howard Beach section of New York City, in which an African American man was killed while attempting to evade a violent mob of teenagers shouting racial epithets. Originally employed by journalists and politicians, the term was used soon thereafter by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a number of other law enforcement agencies across the United States to characterize any criminal offense motivated either entirely or in part by the fact or perception that a victim is different in socially significant ways from the perpetrator.

The term hate crime can be misleading, because it implies incorrectly that hatred is invariably a distinguishing characteristic of this type of offense. Although it is true that many hate-motivated crimes involve intense animosity toward the victim, many others do not. Conversely, many offenses involving hatred between the offender and the victim are not hate crimes in the sense intended here. For example, an assault that arises out of a dispute between two coworkers who compete for a promotion might involve intense hatred, even though it is not based on any racial or religious differences between them.

Limited federal legislation exists in the United States, thus leaving it primarily to the states to formulate hate crime legislation. Forty-five states and the District of Columbia presently have some form of hate crime statute; among them, a wide variation in the specifics of the laws exists. For example, in the area of protected groups (i.e., designated groups protected in the statute), most states list crimes targeted toward individuals because of their race, religion, or ethnicity as prohibited. However, a number of states also include sexual orientation, disability, gender, and age. The implication of this lack of uniformity is that members of a particular group may be protected by a hate crime statute in one community but not protected in a neighboring community in an adjacent state.

Another legal distinction among state laws involves the penalty structure of the statutes. In some states, a separate statute exists that prohibits hate crime behavior. In other states the hate crime law is a "penalty enhancement." Thus, for the commission of a crime motivated by bias, the penalty may increase. Penalty enhancements may also apply to crimes committed with a gun or by individuals with long criminal histories, or crimes committed against vulnerable victims such as children.

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