Abstract
This article draws on a qualitative study that examines how Asian-descendant victims of hate activities in Canada perceive, interpret, and engage with hate crime laws and the legal system. My findings show that participants’ understanding of these laws is deeply relational, shaped by their encounters with perpetrators, the legal system, and the nation-state. While participants acknowledge the symbolic promise of protection and justice that hate crime laws offer, they also perceive these laws as potential sources of burdens and harm. This ambivalence stems from personal experiences and broader social and institutional contexts that influence how marginalized individuals perceive legal protections and justice. By examining these dynamics, this study advances law and society scholarship by offering a nuanced understanding of how marginalized communities navigate and interpret legal protections, emphasizing the need to critically assess legal processes through the lived experiences of underrepresented individuals.
Introduction
What is currently referred to as a hate crime is not a new phenomenon in human history (Jacobs and Potter, 1998; Jenness, 2007; Jenness and Broad, 1997; Jenness and Grattet, 2001; Petrosino, 1999), and Canada is no exception. As the Special Committee on Hate Propaganda in Canada noted in 1966, “Hate is as old as man and doubtless as durable” (see Plaut, 1967: 313). Asian-descent individuals in Canada have long faced discrimination, ranging from physical violence—such as the 1907 Vancouver riots, when mobs violently attacked Chinatown (Gilmour, 2012; Lee, 2007a)—to persistent racial stereotypes, including the “yellow peril” myth at the turn of the 20th century (Lee, 2007b). Beyond individual prejudice, state-enforced policies have historically institutionalized exclusion and racism, such as Canada's Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 (commonly known as the Chinese Exclusion Act), which virtually banned the entry of Chinese immigrants and required all Chinese residents—including Canadian-born individuals—to register with the government (Stanley, 2024). These historical legacies continue to underpin contemporary anti-Asian hate activities and influence how individuals of Asian descent understand and navigate legal protections today.
Despite the long-standing presence of racialized violence, hate crime law represents a relatively recent legal response aimed at addressing this persistent issue (Bleich, 2011; Jenness, 2007). In Canada, hate-related provisions were first incorporated into the Criminal Code of Canada in 1970 as laws against hate propaganda, following recommendations from the Special Committee on Hate Propaganda (Walker, 2018). Another key provision, section 718.2(a)(i) of the Criminal Code, has been in place since 1996 (Carter, 2001; Grant, 2017). It allows for increased sentences when an offense is “motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression, or on any other similar factor.” However, the gap between legal protections against hate activities and the lived experiences of at-risk communities persists, as evidenced by the surge in racism and the sharp increase in anti-Asian hate crimes fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic (Gover et al. 2020; Lantz and Wenger, 2023; Ren and Feagin, 2020; Wu et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2022). While legal frameworks exist to combat hate, their presence does not necessarily translate into meaningful protections for these communities.
The spike in anti-Asian hate during the pandemic has intensified fears of victimization while simultaneously exposing longstanding skepticism toward institutions of authority, especially the legal system and the police (Harold and Fong, 2018; McCarthy et al., 2020; Perry, 2010; Scheitle et al., 2023). This skepticism raises questions about the practical impact of hate crime laws and whether they effectively serve those most affected, particularly against the backdrop of rising racial violence (Statistics Canada, 2024). To address this question, I focus on how individuals of Asian descent in Canada interpret and navigate hate crime legislation. I adopt the framework of relational legal consciousness (Abrego, 2019; Chua and Engel, 2019; De Sa e Silva, 2022; Hertogh, 2023; Wang, 2019; Young, 2014; Young and Chimowitz, 2022), which views legal consciousness—the ways individuals perceive, interpret, and engage with law—as an entirely collaborative process, shaped not by isolated individuals but by the interactions and connections among them (Chua and Engel, 2019: 336, 347).
In this study, I use relational legal consciousness as both a methodological approach and an analytical lens. This approach examines legal consciousness through interpersonal and institutional dynamics rather than treating it as an individualized experience. Empirically, I apply this framework to 14 in-depth interviews with Asian-descendant victims of hate activities, supplemented by organizational materials that track hate crime trends. Moving beyond top-down analyses that focus on the perspectives of legal institutions or policymakers, I center the lived experiences of those most directly affected by hate activities and hate crime legislation. By examining how these individuals understood and utilized the laws designed to protect them, my findings show that hate crime laws were experienced as both a symbolic safeguard and an institution that fails to fully address victimization and exclusion. This study, therefore, sheds light on how law operates not just as a tool of protection but also as a site of exclusion, negotiation, and contestation.
In the following sections, I provide background on hate crime legislation and related debates in Canada, followed by a review of scholarship on legal consciousness, with particular attention to its relational turn. Next, I outline my methodology and present findings on participants’ legal consciousness in relation to the perpetrators, the legal system, and the nation-state. In the concluding section, I discuss how these findings contribute to broader conversations about legal protection, racialized exclusion, and the role of law in reproducing inequality.
Debate Over Hate Crime Laws
Since the introduction of hate-related provisions into the Criminal Code in 1970 (Walker, 2018), Canada has established a comprehensive legal framework to address hate. This system combines prohibitions and protections within both criminal law and human rights regimes. Section 318 of the Criminal Code criminalizes advocating or promoting genocide, while section 319 prohibits public incitement and the willful promotion of hatred against an identifiable group. 1 Section 430(4.1) criminalizes mischief targeting religious property and educational institutions, and section 718.2(a)(i) ensures that bias, prejudice, or hate is considered an aggravating factor in sentencing. Within the human rights system, every legislature in Canada has passed a law to prohibit or limit discriminatory activities (McNamara, 2005). As a collection of legal regulations against hate, these laws provide tools to respond to various types of hate crimes.
Internationally, hate crime legislation has become an integral part of standards for policing and criminal justice (Pap, 2021). However, the legal framework addressing hate is not static but undergoes continual evolution. In North America, hate crime legislation has been a subject of legal debate for almost three decades (Swiffen, 2018). Recent developments in Canada showcase this ongoing evolution. One notable example is the now-repealed section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA), which once classified it as a discriminatory practice to “communicate telephonically or to cause to be so communicated… any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt.” However, due to concerns over its infringement on freedom of expression, as guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, this provision was repealed in 2013 through Bill C-304. Beyond repeals, new legislative proposals continue to emerge. For instance, Bill C-261 was introduced in the House of Commons in 2022. It seeks to define “hatred” within section 319 of the Criminal Code and proposes an amendment to the CHRA to classify as discriminatory the act of communicating or facilitating hate speech via the Internet or other telecommunications platforms. These legislative shifts, along with their broader legal and policy implications, underscore the importance of examining the evolving discourse surrounding hate crime laws.
This ongoing transformation has sparked extensive academic and legal debate, with scholarship in this area focusing on three key focal points where tensions emerge. One major area of discussion centers on which victim groups should be included in legal protections. This reflects broader societal debates about identity, marginalization, and equal protection under the law. For example, there has been prolonged resistance to adding sexual orientation as a protected category under section 718.2(a)(i) (Lunny, 2017). Opposing rationales include insufficient evidence to justify its inclusion, and the argument that violence against gays is contingent upon their “risky sexual behaviors” (Lunny, 2017: 74). Jacobs, one of the most vocal critics of hate crime legislation (McPhail, 2000), argues that groups excluded from such protections often feel undervalued (Jacobs and Potter, 1998). The categorization of victims and offenders based on attributes, such as race, class, or religion, has also generated concerns about the possibility of conflict and division rooted in ethnic and religious differences (Jacobs and Potter, 1998). Other studies question whether marginalized groups, such as the homeless or subcultural communities, receive adequate attention and protection under hate crime laws (Garland, 2012) and suggest that the focus of the legal debate should shift from deciding which identity groups to protect toward prioritizing the individuals who are targeted (Garland and Chakraborti, 2012).
Another line of inquiry asks whether laws are sufficient for tackling hate. Deterrence is a primary purpose for hate crime laws (Blazak, 2011), but existing provisions, such as section 718.2(a)(i), are critiqued for failing to “condemn hate crime strongly enough” (Shaffer, 1995: 199). One recommended way by practitioners to make these laws more deterrent is by creating a distinct offense for violent acts committed with a hateful motive (Mathis, 2018; Shaffer, 1995). In practice, however, hate crime laws have demonstrated greater success in gaining political approval and withstanding judicial scrutiny when structured as an enhancement of penalties for established criminal acts, as opposed to establishing separate offenses contingent on a motive of group-specific bias or animus (Mathis, 2018). In examining the impact of hate crime laws, research highlights their vital symbolic value (Grattet and Jenness, 2001). These laws impose enhanced penalties because hate crimes inflict harm not only on victims but also on their communities and society as a whole (Alkiviadou, 2022). Thus, hate crime laws communicate a powerful statement that hate-motivated violence is unacceptable and has no place in a society dedicated to equality and multiculturalism (Shaffer, 1995). These laws are welcomed because they represent a “public vindication of social values of tolerance, equality and respect” (Mason, 2014: 78).
There have also been studies questioning whether legal provisions can play any role in resolving the challenges faced by at-risk groups. The concern is that these laws often fail to address systemic factors and instead promote a myth of “state innocence,” where the state is seen as a neutral arbiter of injury, punishment, and justice, rather than as one of the contributors to injustice in the lives of marginalized groups (Ashley, 2018: 29). Swiffen (2018) documents the emergence of resistance to hate crime legislation from groups advocating for LGBTQ+ communities who are poor, of color, and/or transgender. They raised concerns about the criminal justice system's interactions with marginalized communities and questioned the effectiveness of hate crime legislation in preventing violence.
While this body of literature has documented the debate over hate crime laws in Canada and other liberal democracies, it has been characterized by an emphasis on legislative approach taken through a top-down, punitive lens. This perspective views hate crime law as a retributive measure and symbolic expression of societal values that aims at “deterrence, incapacitation, and symbolism” (Blazak, 2011: 253). To date, however, little is known about the impact of hate crime law on the lives of individuals from frequently targeted communities. Are they protected as expected? Has the law been useful in their pursuit of justice? Institutional practices can differ from victims’ expectations, leading to a gap between legislative intent and social reality (Bell, 2002; Bumiller, 1988). Thus, it is equally crucial to assess how hate crime laws resonate—or fail to resonate—with the individuals they aim to protect. In this study, I apply the analytical lens of legal consciousness to explore this, examining whether legal frameworks provide a sense of justice or support, or instead contribute to feelings of alienation and skepticism.
Legal Consciousness and Its Relational Turn
Legal consciousness studies seek to understand how individuals experience and interpret the law as they “engage, avoid, or resist the law and legal meanings” (Silbey, 2001: 8626). In their article tracing the development of legal consciousness research over nearly four decades, Chua and Engel (2019) identify three different clusters of scholars: Identity, Hegemony, and Mobilization schools. In this paper, my focus diverges from the Hegemony school, which examines law as a “pervasive and powerful instrument of state control” (Chua and Engel, 2019: 339), and from the Mobilization school, which explores “the circumstances under which people deploy the law to protect their interests” (Chua and Engel, 2019: 341). Instead, I am driven by the Identity school's objective to capture how the place of law in people's lives is “intimately connected to their sense of who they are” (Chua and Engel, 2019: 338). This emphasis highlights the complexities of legal consciousness for those whose identities are shaped by both marginalization and legal engagement.
Several law and society scholars have applied the analytical lens of legal consciousness to explore how law and identity shape one another. Nielsen (2000) finds that racialized individuals and white women oppose legal regulation of street harassment due to distrust in the legal system and a reluctance to view themselves as victims, while white men oppose it due to their allegiance to free speech values. Morrill et al. (2010) show that despite experiencing higher rates of rights violations, Asian American students are no more likely than white students to take legal action, possibly due to the social pressures and tensions associated with their portrayal as a “model minority.” Young and Billings (2020) reveal that individuals with high cultural capital assert their rights more confidently when mediating between state-conferred rights and requests from state authority, while those with limited cultural capital are more vulnerable to authority and thus more susceptible to prosecution. Together, these studies shed light on how the social location of legal subjects and the experiences arising from that location significantly impact their legal consciousness.
The impact of legal claiming on subordinated identities is often paradoxical. Kirkland (2008) highlights this tension for “fat people,” who often prioritize identity-building over legal action. While some invoked antidiscrimination law to describe their experiences, they remained aware of its limitations and distanced themselves from labels like “disabled.” In Abrego's (2008) study, undocumented immigrant students saw the law as both restrictive and empowering. Immigration laws cast them as outsiders; at the same time, these same laws also offered protections and opportunities, such as access to higher education with an exemption from non-resident tuition. This dual effect of the law is also evident in Galli's (2020) study, which shows that unaccompanied minors are subject to ambivalent state policies: as children, they are deemed deserving of protection, but as undocumented immigrants, they are exposed to state-sanctioned legal violence. Consequently, their legal consciousness is dichotomous, marked by simultaneous feelings of deservingness/rights and stigma/subordination.
In recent years, a growing number of studies apply the concept of relational legal consciousness to explore how legal meanings are shaped within relationships (Abrego, 2019; Chua and Engel, 2019; De Sa e Silva, 2022; Hertogh, 2023; Wang, 2019; Young, 2014; Young and Chimowitz, 2022). This approach views legal consciousness as a collaborative phenomenon that is “not formulated person by person but is constituted by their very relationships and exists among and between individual minds” (Chua and Engel, 2019: 347). Young's (2014) ethnography in Hawaii demonstrates that people's perceptions of law and their sense of order and disorder in different contexts are shaped in part by the beliefs they assume others hold (p. 516). Abrego (2019) shows that young adults in Latino mixed-status families understand their legal status relationally through interactions with loved ones, while Hertogh (2023) highlights how welfare clients’ views and choices are influenced by their relationships with officials. A subset of this approach, second-order legal consciousness, focuses on Person A's beliefs about Person B's attitudes, impressions, and inclinations regarding law (Young and Chimowitz, 2022: 242). Since second-order legal consciousness is a subset of relational legal consciousness, as categorized by Young and Chimowitz (2022), I use the latter as the umbrella term to describe the general research approach of this study.
This relational perspective is essential for understanding the legal consciousness of Asian-descendant hate crime victims for two key reasons. First, research on Asian-descendant victims in hate crime contexts is scarce, as most studies focus on their victimization through domestic violence and sexual assault, where victims often feel too ashamed to seek help (Gill, 2004; Lantz and Wenger, 2021; Shen, 2011). This reluctance also applies to hate crimes, with Asian-descendant victims less likely to report incidents than other minorities or white individuals (Lantz and Wenger, 2021; Zaykowski, 2010). However, understanding of the mechanisms underlying these patterns remains limited, as previous studies have predominantly relied on surveys or theoretical frameworks (see Gover et al., 2020; Ren and Feagin, 2020; Wu et al., 2021), which may not fully capture the nuanced experiences and barriers faced by these victims. Second, Asian-descendant individuals in Canada share a collective memory of marginalization rooted in historical violence, harassment, and exclusionary state policies (Anand, 1998; Backhouse, 1999; Dua, 2007; Gilmour, 2012; Lee, 2007a, 2007b; Mawani, 2009; Stanley, 2024). This legacy amplifies fears of victimization and distrust in legal institutions (Ewick and Silbey, 1998; McCarthy et al., 2020; Nielsen, 2000; Scheitle et al., 2023). Yet, how these enduring sentiments shape the lived experiences of those now protected under hate crime laws remains unclear.
Thus, analyzing interviews with Asian-descendant hate crime victims through the lens of relational legal consciousness provides valuable insights. This approach accounts for their personal and community histories of marginalization and examines how they perceive the law in relation to perpetrators, legal systems, and the nation-state. It bridges macro-level studies of justice processes with micro-level analyses of racialized victims’ decision-making (see Gómez, 2016), revealing how legal consciousness is shaped by positionality and lived experiences rooted in historical and systemic injustices. Data and methods are detailed in the next section.
Data and Methods
I draw on 14 interviews with victims of hate activities coming from Asian descent and complement the dataset with annual audits of antisemitic incidents (referred to hereafter as the annual report(s)) published by B’nai Brith Canada's League for Human Rights (referred to hereafter as the League) between 1982 and 2022. Interviews were carried out in Canada from early spring to fall of 2024, with the ethics approval from the University of British Columbia. For participant recruitment, I used key informant and respondent-driven sampling (Heckathorn, 1997), a method commonly used to engage with hard-to-reach populations for sensitive research topics (Ellard-Gray et al., 2015). Interviews lasted approximately 1.5 to 2 h each and were audio recorded with participant permission. Four interviews were conducted in English and the rest in Mandarin, transcribed verbatim, and translated by the author. Participants, aged 24 to 80, included 12 women and two men: one came from a Japanese background, two identified as Malaysian-Chinese, one as Vietnamese-Chinese, and the rest as Chinese. With one exception, all had at least a Bachelor's degree, with eight holding Master's degrees and one each holding a Doctoral or Juris Doctor degree. Three were second-generation Canadians, five were permanent residents of Canada, and the rest were in the process of obtaining permanent residency. All participants were assigned pseudonyms.
While previous studies on hate crime have typically relied on surveys or theoretical approaches to examine the experiences of Asian populations 2 (see Gover et al., 2020; Lantz and Wenger, 2023; Ren and Feagin, 2020; Wu et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2022), my research builds on work that used interviews to explore anti-queer violence (Meyer, 2008, 2012), employing a similar approach to capture participants’ experiences and meaning-making processes (Holstein and Gubrium, 1995). In each in-depth interview, I discussed with participants their experiences of being targeted by hate, their justice-seeking paths, and the impacts of both the incidents and justice-seeking efforts. The interviews were designed to be semi-structured and open-ended to allow participants to guide much of the discussion, describe their experiences, and share their perspectives in detail.
Though the sample size is relatively small, scholars have suggested that there is potential to “learn a great deal from small samples” (Compton, 2018: 195), especially when working with hard-to-reach populations. Asian-descendent victims, who are less likely than other groups to report hate-related victimization to the police (Lantz and Wenger, 2021; Zaykowski, 2010), are often difficult to reach due to shame or reluctance to discuss their victimization (Gill, 2004; Shen, 2011). Treating each respondent's experience as a case, I evaluated theoretical saturation (Small, 2009), which can be achieved “within a narrow range of interviews”—typically between 9 and 17 (Hennink and Kaiser, 2022: 7). Given the qualitative sampling and analysis, this work is not intended to be fully generalizable to larger populations; rather, it aims to critically assess legal processes through the lived experiences of underrepresented individuals (see Chan, 2019; Inara Rodis, 2024).
Considering that hate crime is not yet recognized as a specific charge in the Criminal Code and thus without an official legal definition, I reference the criteria used by the police, who ultimately determine what qualifies as a hate crime in practice (Grattet and Jenness, 2005; Jenness and Grattet, 2005; Phillips and Grattet, 2000). I refer to a hate crime as a criminal offence committed against a person or property that is perceived to be motivated and/or is motivated, in whole or in part, by the suspect's hate, bias or prejudice (see Ottawa Police n.d.). A hate incident involves similar behavior but does not meet the legal criteria to be classified as a criminal offense. I use the term “hate activities” to refer to both hate crimes and hate incidents. The hate activities shared by participants included racial slurs, hate mail, harassment, stalking, and more, occurring in public spaces and workplaces. All participants identified their victimization as targeting their race and ethnicity, and six believed that gender also played a role. While the specific details of these incidents are outside the scope of this paper, I briefly describe the context when citing participants’ quotes. Interview data for this study come from the part of the interview where participants shared their justice-seeking paths following the incidents. None of the participants, except for one due to professional knowledge, was aware of legal provisions like section 718.2(a)(i) or proposed updates such as Bill C-63 (Government of Canada, 2024). Possibly as a result, none of them utilized hate crime laws in their pursuit of justice.
The complementary materials I used are the annual reports published by the League between 1982 and 2022, which systematically analyze trends in hate, racism, and discrimination since 1982. I accessed these publicly available reports as digital files from B’nai Brith Canada's website (B’nai Brith Canada, n.d.). Recognized as a critical resource for understanding hate crime patterns (Janhevich, 2001; Roberts, 1995), these annual reports provide insights into the broader application and limitations of legal responses to hate, making them a valuable enhancement to the interview data. Together, the 14 interview transcripts and 35 annual reports were analyzed using NVivo, a qualitative analysis software program. I applied retroductive codes (Ragin and Amoroso, 2019) to analyze references to challenges in justice-seeking and the roles of legal actors, and used thematic networks to identify key patterns and themes (Attride-Stirling, 2001).
Findings: The Limits of Hate Crime Law
In this section, drawing on the conceptual lens of relational legal consciousness (see Chua and Engel, 2019; Young and Chimowitz, 2022), I organize my findings in a way to reveal how participants perceived themselves as a victimized party in relation to the perpetrators, as potential plaintiffs in the legal system, and as racialized individuals within the nation-state.
(Potential) Perpetrators
The qualitative data I collected reveal the extent to which participants are skeptical about the effectiveness of hate crime laws—a skepticism often shaped by their experiences of being targeted despite statutes like section 718.2(a)(i), which has been in place since 1996 (Carter, 2001; Grant, 2017). Their encounters with perpetrators are not only acts of harm but also moments when the limitations of the law and their own positionality become most evident.
Karla, 25, was assaulted on a bus while standing near the back door, where she was not blocking the way. Suddenly, a man in his twenties walked toward her, ignoring the open space around them, pushed her aside, and hurled a racial slur targeting her Chinese identity. Reflecting on the incident, Karla told me: I was completely stunned—I had no idea why he suddenly acted that way… Why would a complete stranger show such malice? I remembered this incident for a long time.
Because Karla perceived the hateful act she experienced as emotional and impulsive, she reasoned that perpetrators do not actively consider the legal repercussions of their actions. Thus, she was skeptical about whether laws like section 718.2(a)(i) had any deterrent effect. She said: In the incident I experienced, I don’t think the person would have thought, ‘Oh, if I keep quiet and don’t say anything and just push her, I might avoid this punishment, but if I say racial slurs, it’ll add to the penalty.’ They wouldn’t think that way. Therefore, I don’t believe it [section 718.2(a)(i)] is effective in preventing such behavior.
Karla also believed that the perpetrator's motivation was not personal but rather directed at the Chinese community as a whole. Her speculation stemmed from the fact that she was the only Chinese person on the bus. When we discussed what justice would look like in her situation, she said: He [the perpetrator] should be reflecting on his racist hatred toward this group, rather than simply apologizing to me as an individual. And an apology to the group doesn’t really hold much meaning. What he truly needs is to reflect on his racism, but I think that's extremely difficult—there's no real way to change someone who holds such beliefs. So ultimately, it feels like a dead end; there's nothing that can really be done or changed.
Valerie, 30, believed that hate crime laws were inadequate for similar reasons. When she and her partner were assaulted near a bus station and subjected to racial slurs by a Black man, she deliberately chose not to involve the police: It wasn’t that I wanted to defend the racist man, but based on what I had learned through education and the media, I knew that police brutality disproportionately affects Black people. While the man was clearly at fault, I didn’t want him to experience more injustice just because of his race.
She listed the possibilities of engaging the hate crime laws: the perpetrator could “be locked up in jail for a few days” or “be charged with an offense and end up with a criminal record.” However, for Valerie, neither of these legal punishments could dismantle the racial hierarchies that led the perpetrator to his hateful action. She saw prejudice between racialized people as a colonial legacy—a result of white supremacist social structures that use divide-and-conquer tactics to create internal divisions among marginalized groups. She explained: Incarceration only adds more trauma. It does not educate or address the root causes of the issue. In many cases, it prevents people from recognizing the colonial origins of these problems, leaving them trapped in a cycle of oppression without understanding its systemic nature.
Thus, Valerie's skepticism toward hate crime laws stems from her belief that laws and their punitive measures cannot change the social structure, nor anyone's deeply ingrained racial biases as a result of that structure. She believed that education, raising awareness, and advancing decolonization initiatives would be far more meaningful and effective than law and punishment.
These accounts illustrate how participants’ legal consciousness was shaped by their encounters with the perpetrators—whether they viewed them as irrational actors or as products of systemic violence. Their lived experiences as racialized individuals influenced how they interpreted both the perpetrators’ actions and the law's limitations in addressing them. Based on these experiences, they grew skeptical about hate crime laws’ ability to deter impulsive actions, challenge racial hierarchies, and address entrenched biases.
The Legal System
From the victim's view, the limitations of hate crime laws become evident at the very first stage of investigation—this shapes their expectations of whether legal intervention is even worth pursuing. The 2004 annual report highlights that hate crime perpetrators often strike “anonymously,” making it difficult—if not impossible—to identify them (B’nai Brith Canada, 2005: 6). As a result, most cases “rarely result in any criminal investigation because no perpetrator can be identified” (B’nai Brith Canada, 2005: 6).
Participants’ accounts illustrate how this translates into an unrealistic burden of proof, as they are expected to anticipate and document potential hate activities while simply going about their daily lives. Bettie, in her late 20s, recounted why she chose not to report an incident to the police in which she was harassed by a man she did not know: At that time, I didn’t even know his name, and I felt that reporting it to the police wouldn’t be of any use, since there weren’t any surveillance cameras on the street or anything like that. Maybe vloggers would have a better chance because if something like this happened, they’d already be recording it. When I think back to what happened on the bus, I remember exactly what he said. But if I had to provide legal proof, how would I do that? Victims don’t have the means to prove these things. That's why this idea of an ‘aggregate sentence’ is really just symbolic—just a form of comfort, nothing more. It's very difficult to actually prove.
In expressing skepticism about the law's capacity to deliver justice, many participants voiced apprehension about how and when these laws are enforced—and, most importantly, for whom. Valerie pointed out a key issue: The Criminal Code first requires an existing criminal offense. But laws like this have no binding effect on certain actions in daily life that don’t count as criminal behavior.
Valerie's experience underscores this reality. A police car was parked nearby, with an officer standing outside when she and her partner were assaulted. While the officer may not have heard the initial exchange, Valerie was certain that he could hear the perpetrator shouting racial slurs. As they passed by, Valerie's partner confronted the officer, asking why he had not intervened to protect them. However, the officer did not respond. Valerie then pulled her partner away and told him: There's no point in reporting this to the police. If he [the police officer] cared, he would have intervened already.
This uneven application and enforcement of justice is further compounded by legal actors’ discretionary power. The 2003 and 2005 annual reports note that “provincial Attorneys General continue to be overly cautious about giving consent for prosecution” (B’nai Brith Canada, 2006: 19) and that hate crime prosecution is often reserved for only the most extreme cases (B’nai Brith Canada, 2003: 39). As Bryan (2022: 503) observes, Canada's criminal justice framework around hate only recognizes offenses when they are “extreme, deliberate, and intentional.” Ivan, who had racial slurs hurled at him and was assaulted with garbage, was well-versed in legal procedures due to his profession. In his 30 s, he expressed frustration about how the law's efficacy is constrained by legal actors, who often possess implicit biases or a lack of cultural understanding stemming from their composition and demographics. Many prosecutors do not come from Asian backgrounds and may lack an understanding of the community's nuances. He said: When you have a group of crime prosecutors who are predominantly Caucasian… they may not feel compelled or the need to actually prosecute.
Tim, in his 40 s, received hateful messages accusing him of incompetence because of his identity as an Asian man. He struggled with how the legal system failed to recognize certain manifestations of hate as legitimate claims. He mentioned that one major challenge in his pursuit of justice was defending himself and trying to figure out what “claim and recourse” he had. This was because many of the people he sought help from were unable to bring the lens of “being East Asian in North American society.” He reflected: It would have been a lot easier… for some of those people helping me to connect the dots if they had either lived experience or they had an understanding of the nature of intersections, and how implicit bias and majority narratives play into the manifestations of harassment and behavior that were being visited upon me.
Perceptions of the limitations of the law, especially when viewed in the context of the broader legal system, have contributed to a growing lack of trust in the system. Ivan, who has been involved in advocacy work for the Asian community, said: In the last four years, I would say that the trust in the legal system has eroded. A lot of community groups, especially in Richmond and Vancouver, feel that the justice system is not [meant] to serve [them]… And if the system only seems to benefit a certain population of British Columbians, it doesn’t really work.
The Nation-State
Another common theme in participants’ interpretations of the law is the symbolic value they attribute to it. For instance, Karla saw hate crime laws as having “a little bit of a comforting effect” by signaling state recognition of harm: “We see what's happening, we are trying to help.” Yet, she remained skeptical about their practical impact, noting that the actual situation regarding hate activities would likely remain unchanged. Bettie, similarly, viewed most laws as “just the government or even a particular party promoting their idea,” and felt they were rarely “implemented as actual measures.” Both perspectives suggest that while the law functions as a signal of state intent, there is a disjuncture between symbolic commitment and concrete enforcement.
There is good reason for this speculation. Valerie, recalling the police inaction when she and her partner were assaulted, shared: I personally have very little trust in the Toronto police, and during the time when I was experiencing Asian hate [as the assault happened during the COVID-19 pandemic], seeing a white police officer standing outside and doing nothing only reinforced that distrust. In that moment, based on both my past experiences [such as dealing with the police after being assaulted by an ex-boyfriend] and what I was witnessing, my immediate reaction was: ‘the police probably wouldn’t help me [this time] either.’
Ivan discussed Canada's Bill C-63, which proposed to create a new “hate crime offence” (Government of Canada, 2024), and said that it was “a step in the right direction.” He noted, I think it's important that we do send a signal because ultimately, if criminals know that they will not get prosecuted or there will be no charges implemented, they’ll just continue acting the way they do. And so we’re just essentially giving people a blank check to conduct these egregious acts on our population.
This tension between protection and harm is reflected in Sheryl's perspective as well. Sheryl, 36, acknowledged that legal provisions serve as a source of boundaries for right and wrong. They are meant to communicate, “If you do this, then this will happen to you.” However, she noted that hate crime laws—and legal rules in general—are difficult to implement in practice, which results in the burden of seeking justice falling disproportionately on racialized victims. She took on this task when her one-and-a-half-year-old daughter was expelled from a daycare center because the instructor claimed she “couldn’t understand instructions in English.” She reported this racially motivated exclusion to both the provincial and city governments responsible for daycare oversight and also reached out to her Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA). However, the only response she received was an automated email confirming receipt, while her MLA suggested she “explore other daycare options”—a vague, dismissive response she called “empty talk.”
This incident left Sheryl deeply disappointed with Canada, as she felt trapped in structural discrimination. It shaped her thinking about seeking justice in hate crime cases—as a “visible minority,” she believed she would always be the harmed party rather than the perpetrator, because visible minorities “do not have white privilege.” She explained: For the person who has been harmed, they have to actively pursue justice, and that requires effort. They must endure the pain, invest their time and resources, and often face even greater losses. But in the end, can this justice really compensate for their suffering?
Sheryl's experience left her questioning whether hate crime laws could ever truly serve marginalized communities, a sentiment echoed in Harper's perspective on the exclusionary nature of laws as an extension of state power. Harper shared her belief that laws are “written by white people,” reminding me of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which she interpreted as being “written by” former Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King (her original words were “Mackenzie something”). She said: We [individuals of Asian descent] have always been marginalized, always on the sidelines, and have never been part of the mainstream. Here, the mainstream is still the white community.
Together, these examples reveal a deeply ambivalent view of the law—both a promise of protection and a source of additional burden and harm. While the law offers a symbolic promise of justice, it requires victims to actively pursue it—often at great personal cost. For example, the 2007 annual report expresses concern that reporting a hate-motivated case may expose victims to retaliation, as those who speak out on human rights violations affecting themselves, their families, or their communities have often faced further targeting (B’nai Brith Canada, 2008: 18). Moreover, when at-risk groups seek justice under hate crime laws, they must confront the very state institutions that have historically oppressed them (Bryan, 2022; Harold & Fong, 2018; Hwang & Parreñas, 2021; Meyer, 2012; Perry, 2010; Scheitle et al., 2023; Wilenmann, 2019). In doing so, they re-engage with a system that may not have their best interests at heart (Perry, 2010). The process of seeking accountability, which the law requires, becomes an oppressive experience itself, as individuals are forced to invest significant resources with no guarantee of a fair or satisfactory outcome.
Discussion and Conclusion
In this article, I use relational legal consciousness as a method to examine how individuals of Asian descent in Canada, a group at risk of hate activities, viewed and utilized the legal measures designed to protect them. Based on interviews with Asian-descendant victims of hate activities, supported by organizational materials, I have shown that participants’ understanding of hate crime laws is shaped by their encounters with perpetrators, the legal system, and the nation-state. By emphasizing these relational dynamics, my study builds on prior work that conceptualizes legal consciousness as situational and influenced by lived experience (see Abrego, 2019; Chua and Engel, 2019; De Sa e Silva, 2022; Hertogh, 2023; Wang, 2019; Young, 2014; Young and Chimowitz, 2022).
Tracing participants’ experiences of hate activities, I have demonstrated how their relational legal consciousness is intrinsically tied to their personal histories and positionality. Specifically, my findings show that hate crime laws have left participants both legally recognized and structurally excluded. They expressed skepticism about the law's effectiveness in addressing hate, noting that perpetrators may lack the rational decision-making that the law assumes and that laws can neither address the social structures that instill racist beliefs nor the beliefs themselves. With respect to the legal system, participants viewed hate crime laws as limited, failing to recognize how hate is “woven into the everyday experiences and encounters” of protected groups (Bryan, 2022: 503). They also felt their interests were underrepresented in the legal system, leading to disappointment and even mistrust of the system. When considering the nation-state, participants acknowledged the symbolic value of hate crime laws, recognizing them as an expression of the state's commitment to marginalized communities and its stance against hate. However, they questioned whether this commitment was merely symbolic, pointing to a disconnect between the law's intentions and its actual enforcement. For those marginalized within the legal system, seeking accountability can itself become an oppressive experience, demanding significant resources with no guarantee of a fair outcome. Together, participants expressed a deeply ambivalent view of hate crime law—seeing it as both a promise of protection and justice and a source of additional burden and harm.
It is important to recognize that some of the hate incidents experienced by the participants may not qualify as criminal acts in a legal sense, yet they shape victims’ legal consciousness just as profoundly as hate crimes. These experiences reveal the pervasive nature of hate and discrimination that operates both within and outside legal boundaries, influencing how people perceive justice and the law's protective role. Everyday encounters with formal and informal social controls contribute to a complex relationship with the law (Ewick and Silbey, 1998), indicating that non-criminal hate incidents can affect legal consciousness as much as criminal acts. The perspectives of victims of hate incidents also expose the limitations of hate crime laws, which typically address only the most extreme forms of hate (Bryan, 2022). When victims cannot find legal recourse because the harm they encountered falls outside criminal definitions, they may feel unprotected or overlooked, leading to a sense of alienation from legal structures or distrust in formal justice systems (Merry, 1990; Perry, 2001).
Expanding on existing understandings of legal consciousness (see Abrego, 2008; Galli, 2020; Kirkland, 2008), this study demonstrates how marginalized communities navigate the tensions between legal recognition and structural exclusion. The coexistence of skepticism and cautious hope among participants reveals their perception of a disconnect between the state's symbolic intentions—projecting justice—and the practical enforcement of laws, which are often viewed as inadequate or inaccessible. This perspective resonates with arguments from critical legal studies that the law serves as a mechanism through which the nation-state defines and enforces the boundaries of belonging and exclusion (Brown, 2020; Ewick, 2004; Haney López, 1996). As such, it often perpetuates structural inequalities by demanding significant effort from victims while offering limited assurances of fair outcomes (Calavita, 2010; Halliday, 2019; Perry, 2001). Participants’ experiences further align with the assertion that legal systems can foster resilience or alienation, particularly when individuals must navigate complex systems at great personal cost (see Merry, 1990). The relational legal consciousness showcased in this paper underscores the unique challenges marginalized individuals face in seeking accountability within a system that can feel distant and burdensome. It suggests that legal structures can reinforce social inequalities by placing the onus of justice on those most at risk of hate activities, who are also underrepresented in the legal system. By raising questions about the legal system's role in promoting equality and justice, this study reveals how the law's symbolic gestures, when interpreted as failing to achieve substantive change, can deepen mistrust in both the legal system and the nation-state.
Building on these reflections, this research emphasizes the need for reform within legal systems to better address the needs of marginalized groups. One critical aspect of this reform is ensuring that the composition of legal actors reflects the diversity of the populations they serve. By fostering inclusivity within the legal system, this approach may help mitigate feelings of underrepresentation and mistrust among marginalized groups, who often perceive the legal system as detached from their lived realities. Furthermore, given that marginalized groups often perceive legal procedures as inherently oppressive, greater collaboration between official institutions and community-based organizations, along with increased investment in these partnerships, is crucial. Such initiatives are likely to address systemic issues more effectively when combined with amending existing laws or introducing new ones. While raising awareness is an essential function of community organizations, their role need not be limited to educational efforts. In Canada, for example, class actions have emerged as a mechanism to challenge systemic discrimination, as seen in the case of Black federal public servants (Passafiume, 2024) and the recent settlement for racial discrimination in the Canadian Armed Forces (Government of Canada, 2025). Additionally, community organizations can intervene as amicus curiae in cases involving hate crimes and discrimination to offer expertise and perspectives that courts might otherwise overlook. Organizations such as the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations have intervened to argue against giving preference to citizens over non-citizens for government jobs in Lavoie v. Canada (2002) 3 . By engaging in direct legal action, whether through class proceedings or strategic litigation, these organizations could amplify the voices of those affected and ensure that legal remedies reach those who need them most.
As my findings suggest, long-debated legal statutes have yet to reach individuals on the ground who need protection against hate—many of whom remain unaware of their existence. Broadening the options available to victims—particularly by involving community service providers in legal support and engagement, rather than requiring them to rely solely on law enforcement bodies—could help alleviate both the resource burden and emotional strain of navigating the system. Such efforts highlight critical areas where the legal system could evolve to better serve those it is intended to protect.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
I thank Amanda R. Cheong, Renisa Mawani, and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments, as well as Amin Ghaziani for his guidance and feedback on an earlier version. I extend my sincere gratitude to the participants, whose generosity in sharing their stories and thoughts made this study possible.
Data Availability Statement
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Ethical Approval
The Behavioural Research Ethics Board at the University of British Columbia approved the author's interviews (approval: H21-02872) on 21 January 2022. Interview participants reviewed the consent form script at least 24 h before the interviews and gave verbal consent before starting interviews.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.