For some context, the hot topic in the US right now is critical race theory and the response from the right so far has been to ban it from education and to misrepresent it. The straw man they use is that CRT is actually race realism against white people. They’ve chosen this approach because they think it will be useful for deflecting the guilt of their own racism onto others and obfuscating the reasoning for the ban.

Now most people are not fooled by this, because it is moronic. But saying Anglo-Saxons are genetically predisposed to violence leans right into this straw man, and the left defending it would make it more believable to people. I don’t see how such a statement leads people to an “honest appraisal of their history.” In my experience, people are much more likely to discount everything you say beyond that point.

Since you read the autobiography of Malcolm X, you know that in one case he regretted telling a woman there was nothing she, a white woman, could do that would help their cause. I agree on the point of provocative statements, but not every provocative statement is useful just because it is provocative.
On the second paragraph I fully agree.