Thorny and Dangerous

Howard Philip Lovecraft was a racist.
I almost want to say, duh! This isn't a secret (or at least shouldn't be).

I knew that. I am surprised that anyone could call themselves a fan of his and not have known that.But ultimately it is the man's work we are familiar with, not his life and personal opinions... but I'm not too sure about that.
Woven throughout his horror fiction is fear. Not only fear of the unknown, fear of what might lurk within ourselves. Fear that we may discover something despised and disgusting within one self. The Outsider makes for a great example. (Think it through. We, as the reader, cannot fanthom this horror without the author's innate fear of his racism). 
There can be no denying he was a racist. Recently The World Fantasy Awards Trophy (modeled onH.P. Lovecraft himself) will no longer be. The reason cited being that the author was an “avowed racist” with “hideous opinions”. I have the man's collective works, including all volumes of his Selected Letters. Yeah, there can be little denying it. 
As a fan, I initially felt compelled to (somehow?) defend him, as I'm sure many have. Not only was he a racist, he was also very much against religion, defaulting to the only truth he believed possible: Atheism.
What is racism? What is racism really?Racism belongs under the umbrella of sexism, ageism, religious intolerance and discrimination. Racism ultimately is a form of discrimination. But it is more then that. Racism necessitates action. And more importantly in its definition, racism involves both hatred and malice .

I think sometime we lose sight of this with our current Political Correctness. (I'm not of fan of Political Correctness). Sally Kohn (during a TED Talks speech) makes a fantastic point. She makes the distinction between Political Correctness and Emotional Correctness . She bothers to ask the question, what is the motive behind the statement? Is it friendly, naive, malicious? There are differences. We cannot paint with the (ill-founded) broad stroke of Political Correctness.
I am not going to attempt to find excuses to defend H.P. Lovecraft's position. He was racist. He was wrong. But let us look at the world he lived in. He did most of his writing during the late 20's and early 30's. What definitely would have been considered racist today was not only tolerated, but possibly even accepted then.
Certain concepts had not yet been hammered out. The concept (theory? Hypothesis?) of a superior and genetically dominant (human) race was still a viable question. Don't think so? Check out the orginal subtitle of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species. (It was: “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”). 
This scares me. The Origin of Speciesis the corner-stone Evolution was build upon. It is the founding bedrock many staunch Atheists hold as their truth. Let's reintroduce H.P. Lovecraft's disdain for religion and his default to Atheism. It reminds me of the recent fiasco here in Ottawa over whether (free)yoga classes are 'cultural appropriation'. The assumption being that it's actually possible have a secular default system. This too is a byproduct of Political Correctness. 
Newsflash: Secularism and Atheism are still just another Belief-System trying to muscle it's way as a dominant belief. (I am not necessarily supporting Religiosity, but Spirituality is part of the Human Condition). 

Sadly, Lovecraft believed this too. So far it's 0 and 2 for him.My point in this is simple. To some degree, we are a product of our environment. We cannot judge a 1930's man by a 2015 measuring stick. He was not an island. He was not isolated. He was misinformed and ignorant. (In fact, the man was a recluse. In today's world, he might be the equivalent to all those people out there on the internet with their Ph.D's from Google and Wikipedia).
There is a great article entitle A Student's Guide to Lovecraft: Live in the Grey. A young lady (black I might add - or is that politically incorrect? African-American?) said the following:
"H.P. Lovecraft was a racist. Now he's dead. His work lives on, and you want to know what I think we should do with it? To me, it's simple. I'm gonna make that jerk roll over in his grave by reading his work and liking it! Why should my enjoyment of the written word be jeopardized by his ignorance?

"History is full of imperfect people. In fact, that's all there is. That is not to say that HP Lovecraft's racism is any less disgusting or more forgivable; but it is the responsibility of the living to sift through the ashes of those that came before us to find what is still culturally salvageable and worthwhile. What this young lady was capable of understanding while I stood sheepishly by was that we can learn a lot about life from those that we stand fundmentally against. In our day and age of knee jerk political polarity, a young lady shook me out of my misconceptions of black and white to see that beauty that can only exist when living in the grey."