Americans continue to be outraged over the shootings in Georgia last week that killed eight people, including six Asian women. And for many Asian Americans, the attacks were also something more — another example of racially-targeted violence against their communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. But the shooter, a 21-year-old white man charged with eight counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault, has not been charged with a hate crime.

The killings have renewed questions about whether hate crime laws can effectively address acts of prejudice against people of color and other marginalized groups.

Part of the challenge of bringing hate crime charges, legal experts say, is that prosecutors must typically prove that a defendant was motivated by bigotry. Ekow Yankah, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, says that means having to show that a defendant is affiliated with a hate group, has targeted groups in writing, or shouted out slurs while committing the underlying crime. He says hate crime laws typically focus on incidents where the perpetrator's sole intention is to harm someone because of their protected status, but leaves out other crimes that may be motivated by bias.  

"These statutes can struggle to make sense of people whose motivations are complicated, mixed, overlapping, include real elements of hatred, but aren't the only element that drove them to violence," says Yankah. 

In his research, he argues that governments should re-visit hate crime statutes and update them to punish what he calls "reckless racism," or targeting someone based on a racist assumption.  

To hear his entire conversation with WNYC's Sean Carlson, click "Listen" in the player above.