I thought a hate crime was when you react in any way that directly affects someone. That could be in the form of uttering threats, physical violence, severe emotional damage/psycolocical. Just making racists comments in general, or having opinions in general about differences in skin colour/religion/race isn't a hate crime as far as I know. It maybe racist still, but not a crime.
I'm pretty surprised that human's in most civilized nations haven't evolved past the point of racisim yet. It's getting better though. If you look back on what has gone down in history, alot more bad things have happened then what we see today. Maybe in the next 50-100 years it will be pretty much gone. Hopefully....because there is no place for it at all IMO.