I have used these terms both in English and in my native language for decades and it never crossed my mind that there could be any relation to skin colors. But now they are associated with this so I would argue it‘s more racist now since we‘ve connected something negative (a blacklist) in our minds with the idea of being black.

I think this will do harm in two ways:

a) harm because of the explicit association as just described

b) harm because many people (possible supporters) will reject these kind of things as unreasonable

Now, I think the policy itself is not a big thing. Can be done. But it should have included a statement that the underlying idea is perhaps a hit silly and this is done to avoid this distraction.