Does race really affect?

All quotations come from this article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-race-matters-in-college-admissions/2012/10/05/4ae02056-0f0c-11e2-bb5e-492c0d30bff6_story.html



"Because we both believe that higher education should select the best possible students, because we both believe we can identify such students only if we are free to evaluate the individual experiences and qualifications of each applicant, and because we both believe that this requires us to understand applicants’ own characterizations of their race or ethnicity. ..."

This is the main statement of the deans of Harvard and Yale Law School, trying to argument against a requirement of the Supreme Court, which orders institutions of higher education to "disregard individualized considerations of race". In other words, the Supreme Court is trying to reduce any discrimination because of race in the process of acceptance of the students applying to the universities and colleges.

However, the two authors of the article think that in order to have the best and most balanced students for a university, every detail and all characteristics of the students have to be analysed and taken into account, including race.
 "...our point is that race can be an important, if not essential, aspect of the life story of many applicants and that our ability to assess the individual character of these applicants would be crippled by a rule forbidding us from considering applicants’ race." 

I agree with this position and in my opinion, race has a lot to do with one´s culture and customs, and though one can not stereotype a race, this personal and individual factor does explain a lot about a person.
Race has made many people live through different and sometimes tough situations, that might have changed them positively and made them grow as persons. 
I think that a university or college should be free to choose its students, taking into account race if they think that this an important aspect. Also, I have heard many times, that universities choose students from many races in order to have all kind of races and countries; this makes me think that they never discriminate, but on the contrary, many times give great chances to students of all minorities.

"We need to select a class in which students have different perspectives, diverse aspirations and complementary strengths."  This is another statement of the article, and by choosing from different races, the universities can fulfill this need. Having the best students because of their academic skills and also analyzing their lifes and customs, that balance can be achieved.