Taxacom: Taxacom Digest, Vol 219, Issue 17

[Stephen Thorpe]

 Les,
I guess that the idea must be for the botanical community to be seen to be rejecting the "objectionable" names, so that they can virtue signal that they are not racists. As you suggest though, that could be done another way, e.g. by some published note to the effect that they collectively regret that these names have become part of botanical nomenclature and absolutely do not support any racist ideologies that such names may connote.
The specifics of the present case are possibly unique, but the worry is that this decision will open the door to a flood of similar, yet not quite the same, objections to other taxonomic names. Here in N.Z., we have already had, for some years now, a university academic (Shane Wright) actively promoting an agenda to replace the taxonomic names of our more famous species with names that better reflect indigenous Maori values.
The irony of the present case is that using words that are used in racial slurs in other, more legitimate, contexts can actually dilute their impact in racial slurs. A slur hits hardest when it is a word never used in another context. There also seems to be a lack of consistency in these arguments. As I already noted, calling someone a "homo" is a homophobic slur, yet nobody wants to replace the genus name "Homo", as in Homo sapiens! The use of the prefix "homo-" in other contexts, such as even in the term "homophobic", dilutes its impact. I'm not likely to be accused of being homophobic if I mention homogenized milk!
Stephen
    On Wednesday, 24 July 2024 at 07:29:44 am NZST, Leslie Watling via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:  
 
 I don't understand this comment about magic. Those old offensive words will
still be present in all the old literature unless and until someone has a
way to find all the hundreds of copies of those old monographs and
"magically" change the names. So, IMHO, the whole exercise is stupid.

Instead, a group, for example, maybe of Botanists, could prepare a list of
words they think are offensive to somebody and recommend that in the future
taxonomists not use them when naming new species. The past is the past but
the future can be controlled, should one want to. Or, when referring to
that old offensive name, a writer could add an asterisk indicating that
they feel the word is offensive but they acknowledge that they have to use
the word due to the rules of taxonomy. That way you can signal your own
virtue and not cause headaches for the broader taxonomic and databasing
communities.

I wonder how many more of these wacky things we as taxonomists are going to
have to endure. I mean, we have enough to do to try to get species
described and named before they go extinct, for crying out loud.

Les
Les Watling
Professor Emeritus
School of Life Sciences
University of Hawaii

Professor Emeritus
School of Marine Sciences
University of Maine



On Tue, Jul 23, 2024 at 1:00 PM <taxacom-request at lists.ku.edu> wrote:

> Daily News from the Taxacom Mailing List
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> Today's Topics:
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>    1. Re: botanical names with racist history (Stephen Thorpe)
>    2. Re: botanical names with racist history (Stephen Thorpe)
>    3. Re: botanical names with racist history (David Campbell)
>    4. Re: botanical names with racist history (Michael Heads)
>    5. Re: botanical names with racist history (Paul van Rijckevorsel)
>    6. Re: botanical names with racist history (Paul van Rijckevorsel)
>    7. Re: botanical names with racist history (Stephen Thorpe)
>    8. Re: botanical names with racist history (alberto ballerio)
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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> ------------------------------
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> Message: 5
> Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2024 09:52:27 +0100
> From: Paul van Rijckevorsel <dipteryx at freeler.nl>
> To: taxacom at lists.ku.edu
> Subject: Re: Taxacom: botanical names with racist history
> Message-ID: <1abf4db5-d135-49f1-bf46-efdd5574ebbf at freeler.nl>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
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> On 22/07/2024 20:44, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
>
> [?] The old name won?t just update by magic in the past literature.
> [...]
>
>
> Well, the original spelling (not the old name) already has been updated
> everywhere (or it will have been in the future, after the new Rule goes
> into effect).? Of course, the ?Any sufficiently advanced technology is
> indistinguishable from magic? will apply here.
>
> The ?botanical? /Code/has been working this way for decades. Just a
> matter ofappreciating the miracles of retroactivity.
>
> Paul
>
>
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> End of Taxacom Digest, Vol 219, Issue 17
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