For the other ban, the fact that he called it a "muslim ban" and the specific countries that were picked is what made it racist and ineffective. It's hard to claim it's for security when they didn't include UAE, KSA, Egypt or Lebanon where the 9/11 hijackers were from [0]. It also happened to exclude all muslim countries where Trump has business in.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijackers_in_the_September_11_...

So yes, it had no other purpose than being racist. Just like Trump didn't really care to use the time bought by the Chinese travel ban to actually develop tests or ramp up PPE. It always was a show rooted in xenophobia.