Funny that this is being done partly in the name of RF Kuang, whose book "Babel" promotes a pretty violent strand of anti-white anti-colonial theory. That particular protagonist, a young Chinese boy rescued from poverty due to his innate magical talents, was walking one night when some awful racist louts threaten him and also accuse him of being willing to betray the nation of his benefactors; completely randomly (or so the story would have it) when a page later he runs into an ethnic Chinese who is obviously a criminal, the boy immediately "naturally" feels a kinship with him and decides to join his gang, which uses terrorism against innocent victims etc. It's pretty disgusting to write a validation of basically racist, anti-enlightenment feelings that "being of the same race as someone" is a strong positive reason to feel kinship/allyship with someone, even when that person is obviously breaking the law, and to also betray people who, although harsh and screwed up, clearly saved you from extremely serious immediate death. The author retcons some of this attempting to make the boy's rescuers evil enough to validate his utter betrayal of them... but again, being "mean" and not taking responsibility for a child is somehow considered more significant in this world than saving someone from literally dying within a few hours of the plague and giving him 10+ years of the worlds best education and inventing technology, which in our world's correlate, has led to billions of people escaping poverty. No, the fact that his dad is a meanie/jerk/sexist fully justifies firebombing him and his ilk. okay...
And in the author's world-building, although magical resources are widely distributed, the only group which seems to be figuring out how to actually exploit them to increase wealth is England. But to the characters in the book, figuring out how to use those things at all, i.e. natural resource exploitation/study/efficiency improvement/industrialization is viewed as nothing more than stealing from indigenous people, rather than being a positive sum contribution to humanity. The fact that the original possessors of the silver, and other magical goods weren't doing anything with it is not mentioned. (at least in the 20% of the book I read before this scene, which basically suggests that non-white people should naturally coordinate to attack their white oppressors, led me to deleting it.)
It's also funny that in this book, she's putting out pretty basic CCP anti-western rhetoric, like many other bloodthirsty communists I've met; yet here, she is being defended by normally pro-american, anti-censorship voices, while the CCP is being cast as "oppressing" her. Kuang, an illiberal person, whose education consisted of private school (Greenhill school, today's tuition 32k->39k/year) => Georgetown => Oxford => Yale
"The Chinese censors don't like her (we're assumming), so she must be defended and China must be punished".
Ok, got it.
"No, actually, she is anti-colonialist in her basic world view, and she shows (through her main protagonist) insufficient gratitude to the white westerners who 'saved' her".
So we must burn her at the stake, lest others be influenced by this evil agenda.
Err, ok ...
I guess all that remains is for y'all to ask her "but, do you condemn the khhammas?"
Now I havent read the book so maybe I shouldnt be talking but its odd how your interpretation seems to be totally at odds with others here and elsewhere. In fact youve made me want to read this book alot more to see if any of this analysis is true or if this response is just your run of the mill "anti-wokeness"
Yeah, go for it. I liked the environment she was setting up, but it just kept shocking me how easily and naturally the main character flipped. It's as if the 10+ years of study he went through didn't matter. I understand it could be a natural curiosity from him at that age, and he may recover later.
But the pairing of the intentionally racist stereotype of a loutish brit (not a type I'd defend, but it really is a silly stereotype, especially here where it was totally out of nowhere) followed by a scene which, against her own case, validates that idiot's attacks, just made me lose it.
Like, if you're trying to be anti-racist, don't have your main characters immediately confirm the worst racial stereotypes that the "intended-to-be-hated" racist majority just accused them of (i.e. of disloyalty and ungratefulness to their host country, radical attempts to overthrow the governments which accepted them). It's way beyond multiculturalism - instead, it's basically saying that multiculturalism can't work because even the best newly arrived groups will naturally flip into opposition as radical terrorists. How can we build a multi-cultural society when people we're meant to sympathize with, act like that?
Anyway, good luck with the read. I may have overreacted, or it may redeem itself later. I didn't do extensive further research on her work beyond listening to a few interviews to check if I was just totally misreading.
It's not as simple as it seems, as normal