What you just described is rivalry-based schadenfreude.
> Rivalry-Based Schadenfreude is individualistic and related to interpersonal competition. It arises from humans' desire to stand out from and out-perform their peers. Another person's misfortune elicits pleasure because the observer now feels better about their personal identity and self-worth, instead of their group identity.
I actually believe this effect is responsible for most of the racism we have in the US. Black people are an easily identifiable “lower class” who aren’t supposed to have power over white people or have higher social standing. A lot of Americans were irrationally angry at Barack Obama as a result.
And that's no accident. I'm currently reading Kendi's excellent "Stamped from the Beginning". He goes into a fair bit of detail how early in the US's history poor whites allied with poor blacks in pursuit of better economic equality. The white elites quickly recognized this as a problem and worked to turn poor white people against the black population. We're still paying the price today.
W.E.B. DuBois wrote about this same exact scenario a hundred years ago as well, though writing about the reconstruction period in the South after the war
> Rivalry-Based Schadenfreude is individualistic and related to interpersonal competition. It arises from humans' desire to stand out from and out-perform their peers. Another person's misfortune elicits pleasure because the observer now feels better about their personal identity and self-worth, instead of their group identity.