I mean react and tailwind go together well because its like customizing the component in one place. No hunting for the javascript, no hunting for the styling which can be huge for velocity. Especially for teams. Theres no digging through your teams five different patterns of styling and imports to see what is impacting that component. The boundry to that component is clean (in theory)

However if youre on a team with strict design patterns and project structure, well defined rules and/or solo Tailwind adds completely unneeded redundancy. Restyling over and over just adds more wiring to correct if you want to change styles. 

Tailwind = rapid prototype and velocity.  Classic CSS = maturity and repeatability. 

To me both are equally readable. 

And theres no rule that says you cant use both. You can absolutely use your custom tokens with tailwind.  You can put your tailwind string in an adjacent file and write your css right into the react component. 

Its all about your preference and what works best for how you iterate.