{"id":545376,"date":"2025-04-15T16:35:49","date_gmt":"2025-04-15T19:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=545376"},"modified":"2025-04-15T16:35:49","modified_gmt":"2025-04-15T19:35:49","slug":"botanists-say-no-to-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/botanists-say-no-to-racism\/","title":{"rendered":"Botanists say no to racism"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_545377\" style=\"max-width: 1150px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright vertical\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-545377 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/RPF-nota-racismo-afra-2024-09-1140.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1140\" height=\"710\" srcset=\"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/RPF-nota-racismo-afra-2024-09-1140.jpg 1140w, https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/RPF-nota-racismo-afra-2024-09-1140-250x156.jpg 250w, https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/RPF-nota-racismo-afra-2024-09-1140-700x436.jpg 700w, https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/RPF-nota-racismo-afra-2024-09-1140-120x75.jpg 120w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1140px) 100vw, 1140px\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span class=\"media-credits-inline\">Tree Species\u2009\/\u2009Wikipedia<\/span>A flower from <em>Erythrina afra<\/em>, a renamed tree species from southeast Africa<span class=\"media-credits\">Tree Species\u2009\/\u2009Wikipedia<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<p>Botanists at the most recent International Botanical Congress, held in Madrid, Spain, made a significant decision to eliminate a racist term. The word <em>caffra<\/em> (and variations) in the names of more than 300 species of plants, fungi, and algae will be replaced by <em>afra<\/em>. <em>Caffra<\/em>, which means infidel in Arabic, was used to designate Southeast African origins in scientific names. Since the Apartheid, it has been widely used as a racist insult. \u201cIt made people embarrassed\u2014they didn\u2019t want to say the names of these plants,\u201d says Gustavo Shimizu, a botanist from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) who was part of the Brazilian delegation in Madrid. The new term means \u201coriginating from the African continent.\u201d Although scientists prefer to maintain the names of organisms whenever possible, Shimizu argues that they also need to be aware of the times they live in. In addition to the new rule, which comes into force on July 27, the group of around 170 botanists also approved a recommendation: \u201cWhen publishing the names of new taxa or replacing existing names, authors are strongly encouraged to avoid names that would be viewed or perceived as inappropriate, distasteful, offensive, or unacceptable by any national, ethnic, or cultural group.\u201d In 2026, an ethics committee will be formed to arbitrate on questionable names and draft more detailed rules to be voted on at the next conference in 2029.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Racist term to be eliminated from scientific names of plants, fungi, and algae","protected":false},"author":475,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1651],"tags":[213,230],"coauthors":[785],"class_list":["post-545376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notes","tag-botany","tag-ethics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/475"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545376"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":545385,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545376\/revisions\/545385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545376"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=545376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}