Why is everyone surprised that migrants can be racist, too? Prejudice isn't that straightforward

Xenophobia and hostility to migrants could be a way to show yourself to be integrated, a part of the majority group

British protesters shout abuse at a 'Rally for Islam' in London (Getty)

First, it was a black woman on a bus, yelling out a tirade against a pregnant Muslim woman and her friends, calling them “Isis bitches”. Then, it was the realisation that Britain’s minorities aren’t always the first ones to be welcoming about migrants and refugees. These days, it seems we’re a bit shocked – or concerned, at least – over the idea that white people don’t have a monopoly on prejudice.

It might come as a surprise, because non-bigotry, empathy and compassion for the plight of others are, it turns out, pretty unpredictable. We like to think that people who have suffered might have more understanding of suffering. We want to believe, for example, that Holocaust survivors are acutely more attuned to the deadly dehumanisation of others. There’s an assumption that first or second generation British migrants might be more sympathetic to the thousands now fleeing war and persecution and risking death to get to Europe. Or we might imagine that black people, after hundreds of years of violent racism and subjugation and a systemic discrimination that still continues to operate in myriad forms, might be more savvy to the kind of hostility that Muslims face today.

If only it were that straightforward. You could argue that minorities cannot be racist, because racism is prejudice plus power: so someone without power, someone who isn’t part of the majority culture, has no capacity to be racist. But even if you accept this definition – not everybody does – it doesn’t by any means make minorities immune to the prejudice or bigotry that informs racism, or somehow not susceptible to the biases that permeate societies.

Our tolerances and sympathies are cut up and messed up by so many different factors – class, poverty, insecurity, status, lack of power, life experiences and exposure to differences, as well as race and gender – that it’s impossible to premise the potential for tolerance of others on skin colour or minority status.

On top of which, minorities and migrants are typically set against each other – as labour pools, to compete against each other, or as bottom-rung communities fighting over the same limited resources. That’s been evident in the US, a country built on migration waves, with the last wave to arrive, having battled racism and struggled to make it, sometimes feeling hostile to the next wave of arrivals that might jeopardise hard-won achievements.

With wall-to-wall media hysteria over migrants coming to Europe and supposedly bleeding it dry, anyone dealing daily with low wages, precarious employment or housing instability might start to be affected by the panic-mongering – and that obviously includes minorities. Plus, of course, there might be a social factor: that xenophobia and hostility to migrants could be a ways to show yourself to be integrated, a part of the majority group.

I’d like to think that being a migrant makes me more welcoming of other migrants, but I know it isn’t true, that I share this sentiment with scores of people whose family lines are firmly in the UK.

Scientists have been trying to nail down an empathy gene, but even they think that a lack of empathy isn’t fixed - that, interestingly, it can be acquired. Perhaps that’s the part we should be focusing on.