I researched this a bit and it looks like the actual slur is "Kaffir", which is also spelled "Cafri" and comes from the Muslim term for "non-believer". And somehow this word was chosen to be used as a slur and is considered highly offensive in South Africa. As an American, I'll draw a similarity with the "N" word.
But is the plant name racist in the sense that when they named it, they were picking the slur purposefully? Or does the word simply _sound_ like the slur?
Even the latter can be enough if you consider what it would be like if name had the "N" word - or even something that had the same sound. You would literally be unable to use the plant name out loud. But it would be important for publications covering this to not call it a "racist plant name" as that really depends on how the name was given.
We don't seem to care about soundalikes in other contexts like "chink in your armor" or "spick and span", so why go after obscure plant names that sound vaguely like obscure slurs in obscure languages if you squint your ears real hard? Maybe someone had a paucity of productive work to do so they came up with this project others couldn't criticize out loud without getting canceled?
But neither “chink” nor “spick” is even remotely as offensive as the N word. The fact that I won’t even use the word but I will use the other 2 is proof. I don’t think you would use the word either. If we assume that we’re dealing with a word of that caliber for South Africans, it’s understandable why they want it changed.
We could have an argument about whether we should even have words that have this kind of “Voldemort” power in our vocabulary, but at present we ascribe a lot of power to these words.
For values of "we" denoting "normal, non-woke people"; yes.
Ordinary words in one language can sound like foul words or slurs in another language.
People who can't accept this are not yet adults emotionally.
Funny story: decades ago, I was riding a bus with a friend; we were conversing in a language in which the word fact sounds a lot like fucked, with an unvoiced d. Some old lady was giving us dirty looks. Yes, silly hag, we did not suffer a pointless vowel shift in our language; all the Latin-derived stuff (that also forms the basis of a lot of English) sounds close to the original!
We could also rename Harry Potter to Harry Clerk, to avoid the nasty racism of the producers of China Pottery.
Without asking J.K. what thinks about it of course. The opinion of the scientists that choose Erythrina caffra instead the much more acceptable "Soylent bland", does not matter anymore.
I’m curious which direction the etymology goes. Often what starts out as an innocuous descriptive word gets negatively charged over time, for example “retard”.
Were the plants really named after a word for nonbelievers? Or is there a common root for both. For example if it started as a regional term it could have evolved into a slur.
I’m not opposed to the change, I just find it interesting/amusing from a cultural perspective if the euphemism treadmill is now extending to plants.
South Park nailed it. Once you open this door all is an endless road of somebody, somewhere, feeling outraged by something, and demanding to be changed.
In the end the goal seems to destroy one of the few things that we still agreed to do collectively as human species. Using an universal way to name the creatures that live in the planet.
The same species will have different Scientific names for suiting the preferences of Chinese, USA, Brazilians or Russians. After all, it isn't "racist" not being able to use the Chinese alphabet on scientific names?
Scientists will be automatically tagged as belonging to ideology or political party by the names that they will choose to enforce.
Countries with republics will try to wipe names honoring the kings of monarchies that patronage the scientific expeditions.
They don't even understand, or even worse don't care, about the precedent that they are setting.
> The same species will have different Scientific names for suiting the preferences of Chinese, USA, Brazilians or Russians
Generally the sensitivities of Americans take precedence. I can think of many examples in many fields (e.g. the word "master" because of its strongest association in the US is with slavery, which is not true everywhere).
I don’t disagree, but a counter point is that no one has ever agreed on everything - and colloquial names for species already exist — and that language drifts to and fro like a fog. Statis in connotation or denotation sounds somehow totalitarian to me. Even outside of colloquial speech and in the world of science, everything should be in flux, shouldn’t it?
The idea that the whole world would use the same language sounds much worse than the opposite: that different people would act differently.
Every biologist since 1700 agreed to use the Taxonomic rules (or tried, and failed, to improve the system). This collective project is one of our main success as species. Or maybe we should say "it was", that building has eroded a lot in the last 100 years.
That congress is basically the mess what happens where all scientists had been replaced by politicians.
Languages force us to be aware of certain concepts. English forces us to always be aware of tense (past, present, future) and the gender of people. Some languages require you to be aware of the gender of inanimate objects. A language actually could evolve to force people to be aware of political affiliation, and it wouldn't even be that weird, although it would be divisive.
Scientific language is not like Portuguese or English. Is a language in the same way as math or music are languages. Is a method universal to name things unequivocally with a fixed set of rules --and-- to honor the people that sweated blood and tears to discover this organisms for everyone of us to enjoy them.
Introducing politics in scientific language, is as obnoxious as claiming that is unacceptable that a score contains more white notes than black notes.
Do you realize this isn't a precedent being set now though? Species names change all the time, for a variety of reasons only some of them strictly scientific or out of actual taxonomic necessity. The hypotheticals you're alarmed at have already happened, in some cases over a century ago.
Species names change all the time for --Scientific-- reasons. That reflects that our knowledge about the species has improved. This move is totally unrelated with science, is bipartisan (not all scientists agree that the local toponym caffra is a racist word) and just adds a lot of confusion without improving our knowledge about the species.
I was a working cook back then and we switched to makrut lime in like 2006. Line cooks not known particularly for delicate language or sensitivity fwiw.
As much as the authors would want to honor people that were important for them. Is their privilege as discoverers to choose a name.
Carl Thunberg 1743-1828 was a Swedois called the father of the South African botanic. His work studying African and Japanese plants was huge. If his name is in 250 species is because he did a huge effort to advance zoology and botany. He did enough merits and helped enough people to deserve the honor to be remembered. Science is all about being a meritocracy for the benefit of the humanity.
They aren't deleting the knowledge of the species, just changing the name. They aren't saying everything is racist, just that racial slurs are.
I'm pretty sure you knew both of these things when you wrote your comment too, so I'm struggling to understand what is going on here.
Maybe you should rephrase as like "I don't mind a little racial slurring, it adds spice to science" or something? "It keeps us grounded in the scientific tradition of personal naming of species, and the racism is an acceptable cost for it" would at least be honest.
> Yellow-flowered shrubs called Hibbertia, after anti-abolitionist George Hibbert, are one plant group that some botanists would like to rename.
It's so easy to be against slavery when living in a society where everyone is against slavery (Edit: people aren't black and white, I think it's great that we remember the names of "imperfect" people; it shows humility, open-mindedness, tolerance of viewpoints we may not agree with, etc.). Regarding slurs:
> One of the proposals aims to rename an estimated 218 species whose scientific names are based on the word caffra and various derivatives — which are ethnic slurs often used against Black people in southern Africa — and to replace it with derivatives of ‘afr’ to instead recognize Africa
So, it's a very "local" slur: "caffra" sounds adorable to me. Reminiscent of the "coq"[0] story (which means "roaster" in French).
That example is also a good one to rename though. Everyone is imperfect, but there's nothing sacrosanct about this naming tradition, or any particular name emerging from it. As pointed out elsewhere species names change all the time for a variety of reasons: this is just one of them.
As for your personal aesthetic feelings about specific slurs I don't find them interesting, useful or compelling at all. I frankly cannot even guess what you thought that was adding to this conversation.
My primary complaint is that it reduces human understanding and empathy with both the past, but other humans.
I think the idea that humans are multifaceted is important, along with the idea that someone could be both racist and make scientific contributions in another.
Humans and history are complex, and I think this is a coordinated effort to strip that complexity reality away.
> I frankly cannot even guess what you thought that was adding to this conversation.
That what is a slur to some is absolutely benign to others (what else in this context).
> Everyone is imperfect, but there's nothing sacrosanct about this naming tradition, or any particular name emerging from it
By that logic, we could as well have left the name untouched, as the new name wouldn't be unchangeable either. I really couldn't care less either way, but spending time and money on such petty things feels like a waste of resources to me.
It's just a lot of time and resources you're putting in here today in favor of the racist names, for someone who doesn't care particularly. I do care about not having racist names, an apparently unpopular position on this website.
But I think scientists overall are probably smart enough to handle whatever complication is added to their work by it. And again, they must already be able to account for changes for other reasons, so I trust they can make it through this one as well. It's just not a compelling technical argument.
> It's just a lot of time and resources you're putting in here today in favor of the racist names, for someone who doesn't care particularly
I'm not "in favor of racist names", that's a disgraceful shortcut. I do think that:
- there are way more important issues;
- "racist names" are not so trivial to identify ([0] is an amusing example)
- even if we could identify and remove all racist names, it probably won't solve the actual issue (racial "hate" of various degrees).
> an apparently unpopular position on this website
It's important to understand that there are legitimate arguments against the removal of "racist names". The intentions behind removing them may be quite good, it doesn't mean that
(1) it's a good thing ("the road to hell is paved with good intentions");
(2) and even if it's a truly good thing, it doesn't mean not doing it is necessarily bad either.
Note that its work the other way as well: it's not because it's a bad thing that it's necessarily a bad thing for it to happen. And that's why, despite the fact that I think that it's an unwise choice, I still do not care about it happening: it may have a very positive role in the long-run, and I can't see that far.
> It's just not a compelling technical argument.
Note that it's not the argument I was making at all, as I'm not well-placed enough to have an opinion on this particular matter. It seems that we had a botanist in the thread making this argument thought.
Changing the name of a species means that the species is not traceable anymore on the bibliography.
Not unless you memorize every single change first. This is not a trivial task and the trend of AI to invent facts could made it an impossible one in a few decades so is not a trivial problem.
Realizing that the species are the same can seem easy for popular well known species, but not all species are popular, and often several species share the same name for a while. Sometimes people forgets about a species that is depicted only in a particular article from 1800, but to know that your new species is really new you need to trace the original work.
I can tell you by experience that untangle this lines can became a hell real quick.
The burden that this move will put on the shoulders of overworking researchers will have an impact on the time available to new botanists to do science. This means a humongous number of lost hours of research work, when we need science focusing on rare species most.
Anything that delay advances of science, or will made the life of scientists even more miserable, should be dismissed or done by universal consensus on the scientific world, and much better justified. Period
Saying that "But this guy that studied this butterflies all this life, had slaves in 1810 so their name must be bleached from historical documents" will not harm slave owners.
It will harm --me-- and other people like me, and will harm the conservative efforts done on the species, sometimes even leading that organism to extinction. There are known cases.
Erasing parts of the history or bleaching names in a book is a road to totalitarian hell. Egyptians did it before. It just will block researchers in the future to know the truth or to understand the historical facts.
Perhaps they are not. What is really happening is the world is getting more complicated. And if people don't get smarter, or better informed, their capacity to create problems is going to increase.
Can you explain how this comment? Many people avoid racism as a matter of course, and this seems rather niche at that. Are you suggesting not knowing a slur is itself racist?
I'm saying you're not properly woke if you don't study and memorize the entire catalog of racist slurs in all the world's languages, and point out anything that is remotely similar.
But is the plant name racist in the sense that when they named it, they were picking the slur purposefully? Or does the word simply _sound_ like the slur?
Even the latter can be enough if you consider what it would be like if name had the "N" word - or even something that had the same sound. You would literally be unable to use the plant name out loud. But it would be important for publications covering this to not call it a "racist plant name" as that really depends on how the name was given.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaffir_(racial_term)?useskin=v...