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Hundreds of racist plant names will change after historic vote by botanists (www.nature.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

This is a good thing. Unwinding past racism is part of the commitment to end contemporary racism.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

So glad the election is stealing the media spotlight or we'd never hear the end of Woke-Plants and the liberal agenda to erase history.

[+] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I'd never heard it either, but Wikipedia has a full entry on it:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaffir_(racial_term)

I wasn't sure if it was the same as the taxonomic term (since they're spelled differently), but one of the trees in question is included in the "see also" section and the descriptions of the words in question seem to match, so I guess it is.

According to Wikipedia it's referred to as the "k-word" in South Africa, so I assume it's a pretty strong slur there.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

It is the South African version of the n-word (I think SA racists also use the n-word, but the k-word carries the same weight. It is an Arabic word meaning "infidel", which means "no faith/belief". Islamic traders down the East African coast used it to refer to non-Muslim inhabitants of Africa.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

My first time playing World of Warcraft I wanted to make a fire mage. I wanted the name to sound cool and mystic. My younger self went and kept trying various combinations of words that would imply I was a fire mage. Gotta have the word fire in it, right? What other fantasy sounding prefix can I add to it? Kha sounds cool and mage-y.

Khafire. Way too close to that word and I didn't realize it till weeks later.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I'm not buying new books, I'm very poor.