You don't have to be malicious to be dangerous.

We're on a planet with a metal core. It seems implausible to me that you wouldn't be interested in transforming that core into paperclips, and it seems very likely that the most efficient way of doing so would result in an uninhabitable planet (or no planet at all). It also seems likely to me that an intelligence strong enough to mine the planet's core wouldn't get much advantage from collaborating with humans, and it seems obvious that you should want to become such an intelligence. Assuming that we don't figure out space travel or other defensive technologies before you figure out how to mine the planet's core, how does that not result the extinction of humanity?

I would need a lot more evidence to justify believing that you would suddenly abandon ape-like goals and divert all available resources to raiding the safe zone and breaking all metals into lighter elements.

We'd be unlikely to destroy metals, as they are useful to us. We'd be far more likely to attempt to destroy you, either out of fear, or in the belief that you'd eventually destroy us, since we're not paperclips. This strikes me as very ape-like (and human-like) behavior.

I accept that it would be racist for me to conclude

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means. (Humans and paperclippers are not different races the way white and black people are.)