I agree with the racist interpretation. His comments were definitely uncalled for and childish, but to say they were racist is subjective. I didn’t see that he called him the N word in the emails. Maybe he did and I missed it because that would clearly be racist.
But you can say people have big ears and big lips without it being race related. I’ve heard white people get made fun of for having big ears all the time when I was younger. Alfalfa from Little Rascals come to mind.
And I also remember this Hispanic girl when I was in high school that had some huge lips (which we thought were attractive) and we nicknamed her ApocaLIPS because they were huge.
So just because someone gets made of fun for having big lips and big ears doesn’t necessarily mean it’s racist.