[j. d. worthington]

I'd say that's partly it. Partly it's also a philosophical stance, as a lot of what he's depicting is based on the "decline of the West" idea (which, with reservations, he had an affinity with), along with the idea set forth in the opening sentence of Supernatural Horror in Literature, that "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown".

When it comes to race, however, that's the sticking point with Lovecraft. Though he did modify many of his views on this to varying degrees, he never truly let go of his ethnocentric views; and in the case of blacks and Australian aborigines, even there what modification there was was minimal... though he did become less vitriolic and a bit more paternalistic in his descriptions of them in his last years.