There's No Excuses (For What Happened In The Past)

They just wanted to torture blacks and still do:

H.P. Lovecraft's racism was certainly of its time in many ways—he lived in the late 19th and early 20th century, a period many historians have described as the nadir of American race relations. Yet, Langston Hughes also lived and wrote in the same period, proving that it was in fact possible to write in the early 20th century and not be a racist ass. Saying that Lovecraft was "of his time" erases all the folks (not least black people) who were not racist, or held different views. And it erases Lovecraft himself, turning him into a blank slate, devoid of free will, simply regurgitating accepted wisdom, as if he had no other choice (though the example of Langston Hughes and of, say, Stephen Crane, shows that he did.)

Trying to teach us different is, still, part of the racist process,...