GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – The city of Grand Rapids is changing how it refers to its annual financial report which became controversial in the accounting and finance industry because the abbreviation for the report sounded like a racial slur.

The Grand Rapids city commission approved Oct. 22 to change the name of its Comprehensive Annual Financial Report document to Annual Comprehensive Financial Report.

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The Comprehensive Annual Financial Report is a type of accounting audit that is performed across many municipalities and has been in the past commonly referred to as CAFR.

But three years ago, the accounting industry leaders began a hard push to change the name since the abbreviation for it when pronounced sounds like a racial slur used in South Africa.

“Effective immediately, GFOA is asking all industry affiliates to stop using the four-letter acronym commonly associated with the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report,” the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) wrote in 2021. “Recently it came to the attention of GFOA leadership that this four-letter acronym, frequently leveraged in the government financial accounting industry to shorten the name of the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, is pronounced the same way as a profoundly offensive racial slur in South Africa. The offensive version of this term is most often associated with the atrocities of the apartheid regime. Separately, a similar pronunciation also has a deeply controversial meaning in Arabic for those who practice Islam.”

The GFOA goes on to say, “This recommendation is the result of increasing professional awareness that the old acronym, when pronounced aloud, sounds the same as a derogatory term historically used in other parts of the world,” the GFOA explained. “Most concerningly, South Africa where this term has ties to Apartheid and is used as a racial slur towards Black South Africans.”

Merriam-Webster stated that the term that sounded like CAFR “now ranks as perhaps the most offensive term in South African English.” The new abbreviation for the annual audit will be ACFR. And the GFOA explains how to
pronounce it: “ … using the acronym ACFR, which is generally being pronounced ‘AK-fer,’ with the first syllable rhyming with ‘back’ and second sounding like ‘fur.’”

“GFOA takes its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion seriously,” it stated. “With more than 21,000 members that serve diverse communities around the country and support strategic partners around the world (including the Chartered Institute of Government Finance Audit and Risk Officers in South Africa), GFOA has determined that the continued use of this acronym is in conflict with the organization’s core professional values.”
In 2021, the Governmental Accounting Standards Board also recommended changing CAFR to ACFR.

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“The name change was prompted by GASB stakeholders raising concerns that the acronym of the prior name of the report sounds like a profoundly offensive term when spoken,” the Governmental Accounting Standards Board stated.
Many municipalities had already made the transition from CAFR to ACFR.