Fact from fiction, truth from diction. Like many laws here in the US, it is a big steaming pile of BS. You are right, the act IS the act. The outcome for the victim is quite the same. They are not going to hurt or bleed less just because who pummeled them did it for a Cartier watch and not for anything, just because he was gay, Black, Jewish, or Asian. The bones break just the same.
It is all about media hype and political bamboozling. We in the US want to believe we are in a kumbaya state where Jim Crow, Chan Crow, Sancho Crow, etc has been done away with. No one wants to openly believe racism and such thrives well and still here in the US. Those who smash that façade has to be made an example of, thus punished worse, to let the next chucklehead who would dare do so, know how hard the law will whack his pee pee.
This asinine way of dealing with crime extends to just about any area of crime, most ill-used. It helps get politicians elected and the public watching the news.
The way of even classifying it is nebulous. Is there a 5 point standing it is applied to, or the DA just get to make it up as he/she see fit? If I were to rob an Asian guy and beat him, did I do so for his iPhone, or did I take the iPhone as a byproduct of me beating him because it fell from his back pack? If I was overheard 30 min prior complaining about the Asians at the drycleaners and how they always messed up my shirts, does that make it a hate crime? What if my beef was just with those drycleaner Asian, and no other Asians, still a hate crime? Unless a person was part of a group that targeted members of other races it is hard to say, they did so put of pure hatred. Even so, if I smash a guy in the head with a brink as a gang initiation, for thrills, or because he was gay, Asian, etc, that won’t change the concussion he will have or the amount of stitches in his head.