"Botanists remove racist reference from scientific names" Topic

…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, from 2026, will be known as Erythrina affra instead of Erythrina caffra…

The Guardian: link

Um…afra doesn't sound like an improvement.

Is this change for the sake of change or is it to prevent everyone losing their minds again?

So….now it's racist plants?
Of course this has everything to do with miniature wargaming…now I have to check my front yard to make sure my flowers aren't offending anyone before a game.

Cavcrazy, I hope that you don't have any red flowers…. If you do you should root them out.

What about Barbie dolls and M&M's? It's all a conspiracy!

Explain to me again how this affects my miniature warfare?

The original root of the word in question comes from a moslem term for "unbeliever". It eventually came to refer to all African slaves mainly from the South African region. In this case, even before the woke nonsense began, historians had dropped it usage replacing it with "cape" as in 9th cape war.

So then am I suppose to be upset that they named plants something that I have never heard of?

'Kaffir' – the offending word in its Anglo form, came from the Arab 'kufar' meaning, as Col Durnford points out, 'infidel' (it is still used today by more militant Muslims in reference to non-Muslims) and was inherited by Dutch settlers at the Cape as a term for the Xhosa inhabitants in the locality with whom they found themselves in conflict. It was then adopted by the British when they arrived in the 1790s, hence the now outmoded term 'Kaffir Wars.' The term acquire an unequestionably despective association as an Afrikaanner reference to the black population in apartheid South Africa.

Explain to me again how this affects my miniature warfare?

Well, you might want to avoid using the term while gaming Colonials…

What about "kaffir limes"?

Kaffir Limes are apparently OK. link

Claims that the name of the fruit derives directly from the South African ethnic slur "kaffir" (see "South Africa" below) are not well supported.[10]

Logic rarely enters these decisions, I bet it gets targeted soon.

Well, you might want to avoid using the term while gaming Colonials

Or, you could just play Colonials, and anyone in your group that's offended by the names of plants could just grow up.

Just so we're all clear, "kaffir" is essentially the equivalent of the N word in large parts of Africa. The fact that it originally meant "infidel" is beside the point. It became a derogatory slur in the colonial era, remained so in the post-colonial era , and is still used today. You may as well argue that the N word originally just meant black, as it derives from the Latin niger. You'll still be wrong, while simultaneously demonstrating you're a tone-deaf, pedantic jerk.

So, when these were originally classified by botanists, they didn't choose caffra because it had any relevance other than it came from an area populated by "kaffirs". Consider if the national flower of the Philippines was classified as Jasminum guguensis. Would it be okay just because "gu-gu" and "g**k" are no longer well known slurs?

Nobody is angry at you about this. We can't all know everything. I didn't know "squaw" was considered offensive until they started changing place names. I listened and learned.

Mulsims still refer to non-muslims as kaffir. When I went to mosque in the 70s it was all the rage as it had been for the previous 14 centuries.

You can't expect everyone to be as sensitive as the (much hated by the woke) Western World.

To be pedantic, strictly speaking kaffir, cafre, etc didn't come from kufar (pronounced kuffaar or in Arabic كفّار) which is the plural form of kafir (kaafir / كافر) and which kaffir ultimately came from.

It's not just racism plants have to deal with:

link