Botanists Vote to Remove Racist Reference From Plants’ Scientific Names

upstart writes:

Botanists vote to remove racist reference from plants' scientific names:

[ Editor's Comment: caffra means 'infidel' in Arabic, and it was used as a racial slur against black (non-arabic) people, predominantly in South Africa. ]

Scientists have voted to eliminate the names of certain plants that are deemed to be racially offensive. The decision to remove a label that contains such a slur was taken last week after a gruelling six-day session attended by more than 100 researchers, as part of the International Botanical Congress, which officially opens on Sunday inMadrid.

The effect of the vote will be that all plants, fungi and algae names that contain the word caffra, which originates in insults made against Black people, will be replaced by the word affra to denote their African origins. More than 200 species will be affected, including the coast coral tree, which will be known as Erythrina affra instead of Erythrinacaffra.

The scientists attending the nomenclature session also agreed to create a special committee which would rule on names given to newly discovered plants, fungi and algae. These are usually named by those who first describe them in the scientific literature. However, the names could now be overruled by the committee if they are deemed to be derogatory to a group or race.

A more general move to rule on other controversial historical labels was not agreed by botanists. Nevertheless, the changes agreed last week are the first rule alterations that taxonomists have officially agreed to the naming of species, and were welcomed by the botanist Sandy Knapp of the Natural History Museum in London, who presided over the six-day nomenclature session.

"This is an absolutely monumental first step in addressing an issue that has become a real problem in botany and also in other biological sciences," she told the Observer. "It is a very important start."

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