Attacking this kind of thing only takes away attention from the real and despicable racism that still exists throughout the World.
I don't think it does act as a distraction. It increases awareness of small ways society can be better.
I think my line of thinking is probably similar to Old Geezer's. For me, things like (which on the face of it seems much more like virue signalling than trying to make a meaningful impact, or change) this dilute the fundamental issue at heart of inequality and institutionalised racism amongst the likes of the US Police Forces. We can't change history and I'm not sure that Chiefs, or Saracens are celebrating the historic negative connotations.
We can sure as hell help shape the future and I think we're better of focussing our collectives efforts on that. For those of us who are parents, ensuring that we bring our kids up to see people as people and equals, not different because of race, colour, sexuality etc...
It's been interesting hearing from some Black friends and their parents too on their views. All said they had experienced racism in their lives, all agreed the police brutality in the US was unacceptable but all seemed sceptical of the impact of the protests and insinutated that actually, until bigger problems were solved the protests and Colston statue stuff detracted from the problems at heart more than they made things better.
Whilst I can hold my own opinion, being a white British male, I'm hardly qualified on the topic.