Agreed. I'm well aware that he was a racist, jingoist prick, but "If-" is one of my favorite poems of all time. On the flip side, I have a hard time reading poems like "The White Man's Burden" and "Gunga Din" as anything but fairly clever satire. Maybe that's a measure of progress?
Looking at why work persists despite the negatives is a far better practice than looking for negatives to belittle work.