Hpl wrote a poem called ''on the creation of ni--ers''.
He owned a black cat named ''ni--er man''.
In ''the rats in the walls'' the character had a cat named that.
He used the term ''negroid' to describe some people in call of cthulhu.
Hpl was a product of his day and his day was full of casual racism. I do not condemn him as I understand being a product of your times. (That's why I'm not woke) But yes, most people have a sanitized idea of the 20's if any based on hollywood.
I came late to this discussion, but I have a couple of things to say about CoC 7E - as I'm running a campaign using that ruleset. To give context, I worked on the Italian edition of CoC back in the '90s, I wrote some adventures for it and I ran every edition since 5E.
I like 7E a lot. First, it's so compatible with all previous editions that you can run any module from them and change the stats on the fly, while you are gaming - no need for a conversion guideline or for preparing beforehand.
"Base" 7E is as deadly for body and soul as ever. The players have some more options and both the combat and the SAN mechanics are more structured. I liked the changes and all we needed to understand them was a single session (I ran a one-shot and the plot that emerged naturally from the events was so good that we are planning to write a script for a comic book based on it).
There are some holes. The biggest is that the characters can become "seriously wounded", and, while there are rules for recovering that make this condition harder to heal, nowhere one can find how seriously wounded characters are impaired if the have to clench their teeth and forge on. I had to make up some.
I like how you can plug "DLCs" (my players' definition) to the base game, like Pulp Cthulhu and Delta Green. The supporting material is great both in content and art alone (a player bought the Malleus Monstrorum for the art alone).
I don't know if 7E is "woke". I run a realistic "1920s" and my main reference is the amazing French supplement
"Les Années Folles" (never translated in English - and I think I bought the last available copy in Paris back in 2016). This reference starts stating that you can run a "idealised" or "realistic" game - and the latter implies racism and stuff. It is up to you and the volume then gives everything needed for a realistic portrayal of the 1920s.
My feeling is that, yes, Chaosium is slowly embracing wokeness, but I see nothing on the likes of "You must play Lovecraft Country!" in their outings - and if you are triggered by pronouns then just ignore the idea. I use stuff from 6E and before anyway.
Regarding Lovecraft himself, the trilogy "His black cat", "The rats in the walls" and, "The Horror at Red Hook" is so tired that it can barely breath. Yes, Lovecraft was a product of his times. Yes, he was also able to grow out of it and actually become a very progressive person. This is not my opinion but that of Israeli intellectuals that studied his works and his life. We talked about this on this very forum, links to these studies included. No, I'll not repost the links: do your homework ("Lovecraft Country", BTW, was accused of anti-semitism; the schadenfreude was strong when that happened).
To sum everything up, I like CoC 7E mechanics and how the art became finally both rich and modern in quality, but I have some qualms with strange holes in the rules - the kind of question that should come up in no more that two sessions of playtesting. But the most interesting thing is that 7E is so compatible with the earlier editions that you can use 7E stuff with them (a "switch-back" basically). I'm really happy to have bought and ran it and now I have basically everything interesting for 7E.