Speaker 1: But right now it is time for the way Black
Speaker 1: History Fact. In Today's way. Black History Fact is sponsored
Speaker 1: by Major Threads for innovative, fashionable sportswear. Check major threads
Speaker 1: dot com. I want to shout out a friend of
Speaker 1: the show, I call her Shouty. She sent this over
Speaker 1: to me earlier and I thought I might share with you.
Speaker 1: There's a TikToker and he makes these videos and he
Speaker 1: says everything is racist, and then he goes proceeds to
Speaker 1: explain how something you would never think is racist is racist. Well,
Speaker 1: today we're going to have one of those from NPR.
Speaker 1: For almost three hundred years, researchers have classified life on
Speaker 1: Earth with scientific names, two word monikers like Homo sapiens
Speaker 1: that become a kind of permanent label. But there are
Speaker 1: those who argue that some of these names are problematic, demeaning,
Speaker 1: or even racist. How about that? That's why the community
Speaker 1: of Plant, algae and fungi researchers took a series of
Speaker 1: steps to start tackling these issues, including voting to rename
Speaker 1: more than two hundred plants to strike a racial slur
Speaker 1: from their official names. The move, made just ahead of
Speaker 1: the International Botanical Congress in Madrid was intended to correct
Speaker 1: a name that many found derogatory. One of the plants
Speaker 1: that was facing a name change is the African coral
Speaker 1: tree that grows in eastern South Africa. The problem is
Speaker 1: the tree's scientific name irethenakafra. The second word likely originally
Speaker 1: referred to the area where the tree was found. It
Speaker 1: derives from the Arabic word for infidel, but it came
Speaker 1: to be used as a racial slur against black people
Speaker 1: in South Africa and elsewhere. It's for those that don't know,
Speaker 1: there's a it's like the N word, but it's used
Speaker 1: in Africa. I'm not going to say it. And it
Speaker 1: sounds it's like you could see the connection with this
Speaker 1: word kafra. And so this is why these folks are like, hey,
Speaker 1: we need to change this name. Okay that quote. That
Speaker 1: word carries very violent, brutal, socially unjust history, says Makunga,
Speaker 1: which is one of the folks were that is working
Speaker 1: to changes, goes on to say, and so when I
Speaker 1: see it, I get a bit of the sinking feeling
Speaker 1: in my body, a physiological and maybe even a physical reaction. Sorry,
Speaker 1: psychological and maybe even physical reaction Makunga has given presentations
Speaker 1: that reference the coral tree, during which she's had to
Speaker 1: write out or even say its derogatory name. Quote is
Speaker 1: difficult to be pronouncing that as a black person. She says.
Speaker 1: There are two hundred and eighteen plants, thirteen algae, and
Speaker 1: seventy fungi whose scientific names have some variation of this word,
Speaker 1: but it's part of their official designation for some since
Speaker 1: the late seventeen hundreds. That's why we're talking about this
Speaker 1: on the way Black History fact. Then, earlier this month,
Speaker 1: more than one hundred scientists gathered in Madrid just before
Speaker 1: the International Botanical Congress. This nomenclature section meets once every
Speaker 1: six years to discuss altering the code that's been used
Speaker 1: to name the more than quarter million plants, fungus, and
Speaker 1: algae species on the planet. Some spoke against the proposal,
Speaker 1: others came out in favor. At last, the question of
Speaker 1: whether or not the names these plants names of these
Speaker 1: plants should be changed came to a vote, and it
Speaker 1: ended up being the case that the proposal passed was
Speaker 1: sixty three percent in favor. Just clearing the sixty percent
Speaker 1: threshold required. Some disputed the decision on technical grounds, and
Speaker 1: there are those who agree that with the change, but
Speaker 1: worry it could lead to a flurry of requests to
Speaker 1: alter the nomenclature of untold numbers of other species. Of course,
Speaker 1: quote the names that were in the past, they should
Speaker 1: remain the way that they are, says Elina Frairie Fierro,
Speaker 1: a botanist at the Technical University of Kotopaxi in Ecuador,
Speaker 1: who didn't attend the gathering in Madrid. Quote, you don't
Speaker 1: want to seem like bigoted or something like that. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, naming has to be a stable process.
Speaker 1: She says. That's because these names are used across a
Speaker 1: range of scientific disciplines and industry, spanning the fields of botany, horticulture,
Speaker 1: and agriculture. And to that, I say, ooo easy for
Speaker 1: you to say that from a position of privilege, and
Speaker 1: it's not insulting you course, And you know what, the
Speaker 1: only constant is change. If the name hurts people, change
Speaker 1: the name stop hurting people. Yeah, it's like, come on, man,
Speaker 1: nobody's talking about what is what? Tree? Is this anything?
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, like, just do it. It
Speaker 1: makes people feel better. You're not God and be kind.
Speaker 1: It's very simple. Height,