It is fundamentally bigoted to assume racism, and fundamentally up to people to provide at least some evidence or context if they suspect there is.
The commentor is not going on the offensive, rather the defensive, as someone else brought the issue up.
"makes you look (see, optics again) either incredibly naïve or covering for some pretty bad behaviour."
You have arbitrarily (and repulsively) accused a commenter of 'covering for some crime' - typical of the social justice fanaticism that otherwise empathic people have come to loathe - you may want to contemplate why you might say such a thing.
This isn't an issue of race, it's not particularly part of the dialogue, it's an issue of perceived slight and professional victimhood. Not everything is hyper intersectional.