This is a helpful framing of the topic, and a useful outline of what exactly is at stake in racist thinking. Fundamentally, what we encounter (and this seems most obvious in something like Richard Coer de Lyon) is that racial logic dehumanizes. And I like that you point out the flimsiness particularly around how this logic works; there's a critical race theorist Achille Mbembe who describes the work of race-making as madenning; it operates on such conflicting logic that it provokes all sorts of mental contortions from those who seek to understand it.