Final answer:
The Supreme Court has allowed for race to be considered as one of multiple factors in the college admissions process to promote diversity, with the important stipulation that such consideration does not employ a quota system or provide automatic points based on race.
Step-by-step explanation:
The Supreme Court has played a pivotal role in the evolution of policies regarding the use of race in university admissions, reflected in several landmark cases. Among them, the Grutter v. Bollinger decision of 2003 determined that the University of Michigan Law School's policy of using race as a "plus factor" to achieve a diverse student body did not violate the Equal Protection Clause.
This ruling affirmed the idea that educational institutions could consider race as one factor in a holistic admission process to foster diversity, so long as it did not use a quota system or assign automatic points for race, as prohibited by the Supreme Court's earlier decisions in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) and Gratz v. Bollinger (2003).
This nuanced approach represents the Court's acknowledgment of the complex nature of race relations in America and its impact on education and other spheres of public life, evolving from earlier cases like Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which upheld segregation, and Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional.