Imagine you hear a story about a guy whose house gets burned to the ground. All of his possessions are destroyed. My thought is that you'd naturally feel sympathy for the victim.

Now say you found out the victim was himself a serial arsonist who had burned down other houses. Do you still feel as bad for him?

In my opinion there is no difference between that story and this one. A racist man is angry that another racist man made racist comments toward him.