Sure, but not when done naively. Naive "anti-racism" policies generally serve to cement the current status-quo, which is why they have so much support these days. This is only to argue against the idea that being race blind across the board is a moral imperative.
The issue is what responsibility does Harvard have to admit students in a "meritocratic" (i.e. GPA/SAT are paramount) manner. I don't see that they have any such responsibility. I don't think they should discount Asian applicants because they're Asian. I do think its fair to positively weigh diversity in background and interests. But in a zero-sum scenario, this will look like racial discrimination from the outside, and that's OK.
>perhaps a bank can improve their model on creditworthiness if they considered race
Banks do use income and wealth in their model of creditworthiness. But if you didn't already know that race correlates with income, you might think that they are using race as an independent factor. Presumably you have no issue with this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
There's definitely a bit of gray in there for me.
There are all sorts of scenarios where there are natural incentives to discriminate on race; perhaps a bank can improve their model on creditworthiness if they considered race. Perhaps a company that provides security personnel can better model risk if they considered race. Perhaps Harvard can better improve their ability to accumulate powerful people if they considered race.
But isn't it agreeable that not all kinds of strife is useful to a nation? Perhaps strife between companies is useful for diversity in a market, but racial strife? Which brews into generations of mistrust?