I've been refining my take after reading some interpretation and explanations and this is final take:
Not every book will or should be for a white audience. It should cater to whoever they want. But the tweet also also seems to assume that every non white person has sufficient knowledge of their own culture to understand everything being written. Of course maybe that kind of person is not the intended audience which is also fine, but it's a bit alienating to be told that you're not entitled to learn about your own culture just because some random :lmayo: might benefit from a free translation
And no, this is not written by some mad white guy who doesn't understand what shawarma means. It's coming from an Asian immigrant who's far removed from his culture with little resources in English to learn about it.
Okay, yes, but what about all the people who are reading it in English because it hasn't been translated to their first language and English is one of the main lingua franca of the world? Being obtuse doesn't help anyone, and deliberately making your text hard to read is going to cause more problems for second language readers or people with limited education than it is for middle class college educated white people.
Yeah it's a tricky issue alright. I mean ideally, translations etc. Wouldn't be driven by profit but by making the work accessible to many people.
And again it is case by case. If an editor wants a writer to change an idiom to a less precise US mid class idiom that's an issue as it strips whoever wrote it/said it of some of their cultural identity. There's also the argument that hey, maybe this work isn't supposed to be as accessable to as many people as possible because in doing so you're removing nuance from the work.
I do completely understand the whole annoyance at smug liberals who have the time, education, money etc... to actually get the most out of literature like this.