Plasticity of Contemporary Racism: Functionalist Orientation Anomalies and Emergence of Social Conflict Theory

During the last century, sociological functionalism has been a sociological dominant interpretation. This trend has also developed within anthropology, biology, and the social sciences in general. Since the first evolutionary considerations, social interaction has been commonly interpreted from functional premises. In this way, racism as a social aversion has been seen as a consequence of the natural functioning of human societies. The present study contrasts the functionalist vision with the social conflict approach to evaluate each theoretical procedure. The research conclusions suggest that social conflict is capable of offering successful results on the nature of contemporary racism. However, there is currently a lack of research on the appropriateness of each of the approaches. The present work suggests to continue research of each orientation and particularly the use of social conflict as an analytical orientation.

of production fosters an unavoidable conflict between human interests; and the fourth argues that the social system, paradoxically, reproduces the conflict either by maintaining the statu quo or by wanting to overturn it.

Approaches and methodology
Much of the theoretical assumptions related to functionalism have shared ideas with social conflict. For example, Marx and Max Weber shared principles about their anti-positivism but differences in social classes' homogeneity. Other authors, such as Gumplowicz, shared both Marxist and functionalism (mainly Darwinian) ideas about conflict. Gumplowicz considers, for example, the struggle for survival centrally, upholding the primacy of conflict and then the Darwinian «optimistic» teleology (1875,1883). However, one of the most recurrent dynamics of social conflict and functionalism has been addressing the existing contradictions of racial strife.
The functionalist analysis of racism, prevalent between the 1940s-1960s, was founded with the race relations of Robert Ezra Park and other authors such as Booker T. Washington or Ernest Watson Burgess (see Park & Washington, 1912;Park & Burgess, 1921;Park, 1922) and the political sociology of Max Weber (1924Weber ( /1946. Various authors developed later «pure» functionalism, such as Elie Kedourie, J. H. Kautsky, S. N. Eisenstadt, W. C. Smith, Peter Worsley, Ernest Gellner, Karl Deutsch, and specially Talcott Parsons and Robert King Merton. Its relationship with racism was continued centrally by the neo-colonial paradigm that emerged between the 1950s-1960s. Several authors, such as Aimé Césaire, Albert Memmi, Franz Fanon, and Edward Said assumed functionalism principles. From the 1970s, the neo-colonial paradigm was relatively continued by the world-system approach of authors such as Immanuel Wallerstein, Albert Szymanski, Étienne Balibar, Eugene Genovese, and Giovanni Arrighi-as well as authors such as Samir Amin who shared principles of both. However, the American sociologist Oliver Cox (relatively) and the British sociologist Michael Banton, were who developed functionalism directly applied to racism during the second part of the 20th century.
Given its theoretical eclecticism, this type of analysis combines diverse interpretative views on the functional nature of contemporary racism. The neocolonial paradigm emphasizes the role of oppressed memory. For his part, the world-system approach holds that Eurocentric expansion is the key when explaining racism. Both analysis, however, are based relatively on two functionalist principles: the first, based on a Weberian, political and evolutionary nature, presupposes that it is the nation-states and their needs that determine racism; the second, founded by Robert Park, has an anthropological and sociological nature and considers that the racialized individual finally assimilates racialization and his inferior condition.
Since its founding, functionalism embraced a Weberian form. This means that the ideas of Max Weber profusely defined the principles of racial functionalism. Among the central considerations was the www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/wjssr Unlike sociological functionalism, however, the orientation of social conflict was more widely developed before than after Coser. One of the greatest exponents of the orientation was the previously mentioned Ludwig Gumplowicz. He argued that the foundation of all known societies was based on the conflict between ethnic groups, classes, politics, and lifeways. Gumplowicz argued that every modern institutional form had been constructed as a resolution, that is, a «consequence» of the conflict. In the twentieth century, the sociologist Charles Wright Mills considered that social conflict always remained on the increase as world institutions tended to merge to preserve their power (1951,1956,1959 Most of these works suggested that social conflict was not a consequence of cultural development but a premise imposed by capitalism. With the exhaustion of the colonial paradigm as an explanatory model of contemporary racism, the so-called Castles-Kosack 1973 analysis (see Cansinos, 2020a) allowed us to appreciate how conflict defined individuals' daily lives. Following John Rex and Robert Moore, the Castles-Kosack 1973 analysis assumed on the new race relations that «the total situation is essentially one of conflict; any fear, distrust or dislike of another ethnic group is sharpened by market competition.
We found that under normal day-to-day conditions tenants and landlords deliberately avoided one another» (Rex & Moore, 1960, p. 138). Also, following scholar Michael Banton, they assumed that «the cause is in the subject, not in the object of prejudice. It is an irrational pathological phenomenon, arising from the individual's inadequacies and resulting in replaced aggression» (Banton, 1969, p. 30).
They concluded that «in other words, the prejudiced person projects his own weakness and faults on to an outsider in an effort to safeguard the ego from inner conflict» (Castles & Kosack, 1973, p. 447 (Miles & Phizacklea, 1977, p. 495). Among the different advances of the 1973 and 1977 models, it was found that the integral unit of analysis to understand contemporary racism was not the «human races», but the labor force, migration, and the division of groups under economic interests of capital development.
Likewise, it was assumed that racism was not solely an issue related to Eurocentrism or understandable through the center-periphery dynamics of the postcolonial vision.

Discussion
The discussion about the existence or not of social conflict is a relevant question. It is not a simple dichotomous between the presence or not of constant social strife. It would be analytically rude to deny the social existence of the human conflict. The discussion about social conflict lies in its degree and nature. The question is to discern if the social conflict is a cultural phenomenon created or natural, perpetual or occasional, necessary or dispensable. An appreciable discussion on such a relevant sociological aspect cannot simplify social conflict's significance within ideas such as conservation and progress, science or tradition, or heritage and creation. From a racial perspective, many academic works have tended to dichotomize the analysis of contemporary racism. Contradictions between the tribal/civil, isolated/socialized, rational/spiritual, modern/mythical, or the will and hope have been analyzed from a dichotomic way. However, acting in this way, racism's analysis avoids the causes and does not understand its relevance as a necessary social system product. Both functionalist views and those based on social conflict coincide in identifying the strife within human groups. The main difference is found in the anthropological «optimism» or «pessimism» attributed to this conflict-also called teleological «optimism» or «pessimism.» Likewise, this difference is linked to the consideration of conflict as something premeditated or spontaneous, understanding the human being as a rational or irrational agent.
Despite the widespread rejection of racism in the present age, many scholars have considered that it constitutes a natural resolution of modern conflicts. In this way, these intellectuals have normalized their existence and nature. From the racial point of view, these academic strands emanate from the conservative ideas of the early twentieth century-supported in turn by social Darwinism-that assumed the individual agent as nationally mobilized by his creed, economy, religion, and language (see the origin in Weber, 1904Weber, /1949Weber, , 1923Weber, /2012Weber, , 1924; also see Norkus, 2004;Scaff, 2014;Brubaker, 2020). These ideas were no different from the imperialist chauvinism that emanated from Darwinism in its birth. It was based on inheritance, capital, and competition. Weber, regarding Darwinism, introduced specific theoretical ideas-spiritual ideas-about charisma, bureaucracy, patrimonialism, or asceticism.
However, both approaches only followed a teleological line towards the nation as an «optimal» form of organization in an internationalized «Malthusian world».
Directly regarding racism, feedback between conservative American and German schools was evident.
Authors who viewed social conflict from a pessimistic perspective consequently viewed the conflict as unfavorable. They denounced that Darwinism, «nationalized» by Weberianism and racialized by Park, was not a reality capable of «optimizing human progress.» On the contrary, they considered that there was a cultural and primarily political conflict created by capitalism. This system was self-perpetuating through the state and existential disorganization. In this way, it was understood that the reproduction of the system depended on its historical disorganization.

Findings
Even though functionalism and social conflict coincide in various respects, they are essentially two antithetical theoretical perspectives. Both orientations consider the social system as a functional unit.
However, the social-conflict approach considers that, from a racial point of view, human groups do not merge with the system itself, nor do they integrate, but rather reproduce the conflict. A simple look at tradition-seem more like a consequence than a type of will of the State. What emanates from statism should be rightly considered as an attempt to regulate the conflict, without its ultimate goal is to eliminate it. As a premise of the capitalist, based on competition, and the Darwinian ideals, based on confrontation, the system's nature encourages organizational contradictions as a mode of natural development.

Conclusions
Racism understood as a natural consequence of the system's contradictions can only be understood in a plastic way. Ideas about social conflict as a cultural constant have been widely endorsed today (Bowser, 2017;Pi & Zhang, 2017;Rinker & Lawer, 2018). One of the consequences of permanent social conflict is the explosion of violent revolutions between opposing groups, the rejection of constant cooperation, and social inequality reproduction. In this sense, «the declining significance of [terms as] race, symbolic racism, color-blind racism, and unconscious racism [...] mask indirect and covert ways to continue racial oppression» (Bowser, 2017, p. 1). As the last part of a composition of three articles, the present work suggests that racism, as a millenary social aversion, will only remit if its nature based on plasticity is assumed in future research. Behind its multiple and variable forms underlies the classic conception of «Western singularity» that presupposes European values' superior rationality or the www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/wjssr scientific-cultural support as a part of Liberalism. On these ideals, Max Weber ( /2015Weber ( , 1921Weber ( -22/2019)-always intermittently and occasionally ambiguously-and other scholars enhanced the conservatism that emanated from the classical Prussian State as the realization of rationality, as well as its «character», «blood», and «adaptability».