Were the plants really named after a word for nonbelievers? Or is there a common root for both. For example if it started as a regional term it could have evolved into a slur.
I’m not opposed to the change, I just find it interesting/amusing from a cultural perspective if the euphemism treadmill is now extending to plants.
In the end the goal seems to destroy one of the few things that we still agreed to do collectively as human species. Using an universal way to name the creatures that live in the planet.
The same species will have different Scientific names for suiting the preferences of Chinese, USA, Brazilians or Russians. After all, it isn't "racist" not being able to use the Chinese alphabet on scientific names?
Scientists will be automatically tagged as belonging to ideology or political party by the names that they will choose to enforce.
Countries with republics will try to wipe names honoring the kings of monarchies that patronage the scientific expeditions.
They don't even understand, or even worse don't care, about the precedent that they are setting.
Generally the sensitivities of Americans take precedence. I can think of many examples in many fields (e.g. the word "master" because of its strongest association in the US is with slavery, which is not true everywhere).
The idea that the whole world would use the same language sounds much worse than the opposite: that different people would act differently.
Every biologist since 1700 agreed to use the Taxonomic rules (or tried, and failed, to improve the system). This collective project is one of our main success as species. Or maybe we should say "it was", that building has eroded a lot in the last 100 years.
That congress is basically the mess what happens where all scientists had been replaced by politicians.
Introducing politics in scientific language, is as obnoxious as claiming that is unacceptable that a score contains more white notes than black notes.