No denying, just avoiding being a doofus with regards to human psychology.

https://sparq.stanford.edu/solutions/lessen-prejudice-teamwork

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.251541498

https://economicgraph.linkedin.com/research/skills-first-report

So do we want to use demonstrated methods that improve matters?

Or do everything we can to focus on group identity? That couldn't possibly backfire and provoke even more ingroup favoritism, could it?

Or could it?

https://opentextbc.ca/socialpsychology/chapter/ingroup-favoritism-and-prejudice/

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/in-group-favoritism-is-difficult-to-change-even-when-the-social-groups-are-meaningless/

We need people to research racism to find out where it is, how bad it is, what form it takes, and so on. We absolutely don't want to pretend it doesn't exist.

But if you find it and then trigger every psychological trick in the book to make it worse, you'd have been better off leaving it well enough alone.