Ugh, Really?

So this weeks reflection is unfortunately not on the brightest note. I was inspired to write this after hearing a remark I never expected to hear at this University. Here's how it started:
So this Saturday night an AU student and I were having a pretty heated international affairs debate. I know, hoowwww typical for AU students to argue politics on a Saturday night, right? Anyway, so this student, we'll call him Billy, and I started getting really into it and out of no where Billy got extremely frustrated and said: "Ughhh I am about to punch you in the face!" Obviously, Billy wasn't serious, but I still decided to be a little more snarky than I should have in my response, which was: "Oh how typical, the narrow minded always turn to violence", to which he responded "Oh yeah? Well have you ever met an open-minded Iraqi then?".
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Seriously? I would have never expected something like this from an AU student. So basically, there are A LOT of problems with political correctness to this statement. We will start with the obvious. It is no secret that I am of Syrian descent and Muslim, so it can be easily drawn that this statement was a racist remark, associating me (assumedly based on my ethnicity and religion) with violent Iraqi terrorists. I said this to Billy, who immediately started backtracking and said his statement had ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with race or religion and was NOT a personal attack on me.
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How does that make any sense? If, after Billy threatened me with violence, a white person had responded with my "narrow- minded turn to violence" remark, would Billy's "have you ever met an open-minded Iraqi?" question even made sense? Obviously, the response was targeting my Arab ethnicity.

BUT FINE!!! Let's say that somehow Billy would have randomly made this remark to any person who called him narrow-minded, regardless of race. His remark is still COMPLETELY out of line and racist. He basically just made a statement calling all Iraqis violent radicals. His "rhetorical question" posed a question in retaliation to mine making a blatant connection to Iraqis and violence. Wow. After I shared this information with Billy, he just got angry, flustered, accused me of falsely painting him as a bigot, and that was the end of that. I am really disappointed that at such a political school I encountered something I thought I left behind back home in rural Pennsylvania. Thanks, Billy.