Cultural diversity questions may best be answered under the social studies tab, however, I can provide my opinion for your question.
My answer is yes! It is absolutely necessary! (and sadly is, like, banned in the state of Florida)
Without acknowledging the past or present, how can one know what to change for the future? Knowing how to "solve" racial injustice is does not just come to us by virtue of being human; it is not like breathing, chewing, swallowing; it is not something that happens without us ever having to acknowledge it like making your heartbeat or blood circulate. It is a social concept that requires proper discussion, open dialogue, open minds, cultural humility, and acceptance of implicit bias and or wrongfully learned behaviors.
I can develop a rudimentary analogy that still won't encapsulate the problem. Your coach passes you a basketball and tells you to shoot it but this is your first time ever playing the sport! You try anyway and you miss. Coach then instructs you to change how you did it and this time make it into the hoop. You can try to figure it out on your own and chances are there will be stumbles along the way and frustration, maybe you will deny that you shot it wrong in the first place or tell coach it is impossible to figure out, maybe blame the coach for giving you a task that wouldn't even exist had someone before you not invented the game of basketball in the first place! OR you could talk to your coach about what was done incorrectly not only by you but by other players he has seen both past and present. In this dialogue, you exchange ideas about how to shoot it correctly and though there might be disagreement on hand placement, ultimately you share the same goal of getting the ball in the hoop, right? So which do you prefer?
That is a (probably horrid) analogy but the point is there. You cannot know what was done wrong and then develop solutions or enact change without talking about what was done wrong! For example, we cannot talk about solving healthcare disparities in the US when it comes to people of color, specifically Black people without acknowledging how we got to a place where there are glaring healthcare disparities. This includes discussion about diminished healthcare access past and present, the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment of the past, the use of Black indentured servants as laboratory subjects to be studied and incised like living cadavers, the higher mortality rates of Black mothers during childbirth, the neglect of Black women and undermining of their pain when they do seek healthcare, the mistreatment of people of color by healthcare workers, medical bias towards Black patients, I can go on.
Conversations are necessary to make progress towards true equity and equality. Without it, we get echo chambers and people continue to suffer.