Makes me wonder how many medical treatments and other technological advances we use today were created by racists or people with other deplorable beliefs/practices.
This is a valid ethical question. But there's a universe of difference between, say, "this medical technique will save my patient, but the inventor was a horrible man" and "do I play this game made by a convicted murderer?" In the former case, a life is at stake; in the latter, only an afternoon's entertainment.
It becomes more complicated when you get to works like the Lovecraft Country series, in which African American writers and actors take on that history directly.
If you consign his works to the dustbin of history, you land yourself in the land those who do not study history, and are therefore are doomed to repeat it.
A very good point - deconstructing a problematic work can be an extremely valuable exercise, and you can't do that without the original work continuing to exist...
Rather, it is important to approach his work with full understanding that it is a study in how things go wrong.
... but this is an even further complication - most folks won't pick up that context. Most will just be like I was years back, thinking this Cthulhu stuff sounds interesting and cool, so why don't I read the original material - and will read it uncritically. So is it worth the trade? We keep endorsing the problematic works by problematic folks, as long as other folks get to push back?
(To be clear, I'm no fan of obliterating problematic works, but I'm certainly not eager to pretend they're OK, either.)
This is doubly important when we note, as you have, that the man was rather more racist than many of his peers of his time. But, somehow, even though he gave others pause with his vehemence... his works became famous and influential anyway. So, it is more than "Lovecraft's works show his racism." There's also, "systemic racism overlooked his issues and embraced his work," which is also an important lesson.
Well, in the specific case of Lovecraft, the extent of his bigotry wasn't at all well known, outside his circle of friends and correspondents. There are only a few stories with overtly racist elements, and casual racism was common enough in popular fiction of the era that they don't stand out that much.
Heck, most readers of Lovecraft's stories probably
still don't know about his bigotry. I know I didn't until years after I read his works. (I did frown on the aforementioned racist elements in a few stories when I first read them, but I figured it was of-the-time racism - regrettable but more a reflection of the time and not his character. Little did I know...)
I can buy that Lovecraft might have been a bit more virulent than others but exceptionally racist by the standards of the 20s and 30s? No.
The 1920s and 1930s were definitely a more overtly racist time, but Lovecraft was still above average. I'm reasonably sure most of-the-time racists didn't have fantasies about minorities getting gassed...
I can see the case for not buying their goods, but our society would fail to function if everyone stopped buying things from those they disagreed with or found highly immoral because none of us see eye to eye on everything and all of us have character faults - especially when the past no longer shields us from or prior actions.
Would that sort of behavior really bring down society? Maybe taken to extremes, perhaps, in the sense that 100% ethical consumption is nearly impossible in modern, globalized societies, so you'd have to boycott everything.
But in terms of entertainment? I think it would be pretty great if more people took stands and refused to buy things from folks they think have abhorrent views or behavior. Instead, you more often see folks boycotting the things they wouldn't have bought in the first place, and rationalizing purchases of the things they like but know come from a bad source...
