] If it is the case that it is specific cultural elements within that self-segregated community, then those fair and blind standards are not really fair nor blind.
This is the very wrong-headed thinking of quota-mongers. They think that if some aspect of society produces differences in objectively relevant and reasonable qualifications between groups, then somehow it is unfair for any system to ever use those qualifications as the hiring criteria. It is as though if my neighbor Jimmy had crappy parents that didn't foster his intellect and as a result he is objectively much less intellectually skilled when he barely graduates high school. Since it wasn't his fault that his parents sucked and it is in some sense unfair that he was born to such parents while others got lucky with better parents, it is therefore unfair for anyone not to hire him due to his lack of skills that resulted from this unfairness.
Since no one mentioned or hinted at "quotas", what prompted this hiccup of a straw man?
It isn't a strawman. You just lack the reasoning skills needed to grasp the relevance. Dismissing the objective fairness of the process (as your argument does) and deeming the process unfair if it doesn't lead to equal outcomes (which is what you do), is the argument put forth by people who want to use race rather than objective qualifications to determine outcome (which is what quota systems such as nearly all AA hiring standards do, including those you have argued for and defended in countless threads). You were dismissing the use of objective competence as "fair" on the grounds that it doesn't produce equal outcomes because the groups are not equal in competence. Using some form of group-affiliation quota system is the only form of hiring process by these companies that would "correct" for those inequalities.
When an unfair process produces differences in outcomes, this doesn't mean that it is unfair for any other later process to use those outcomes in its own process. The unfairness of each process is independent and is a function of only the relevance of the criteria it uses, not the reasons why people differ on those criteria due to prior processes.
An unfair process generates outcomes (fair and unfair).
No, you perfectly illustrate my point. You ignore whether the process judges people on consistent and objectively relevant qualifications and instead define "fair outcomes" of a process by whether they are exact outcomes you want. That is the outlook of the egocentric 3 year old that thinks that every time they don't get what they want, something was "unfair". Only by such an outlook could unfair processes produce fair results or a fair process produce unfair results. The fairness of the outcomes actually "generated" or "produced" by a process are a direct function of the fairness of that particular process itself, since "generated" and "produced" indicate that features of the process were the causal determinants of the fairness rather than a pre-existing inequality that the process merely failed to reverse (which is not the mark of fair processes).
A subsequent process which relies on those outcomes of the previous process is likely to perpetuate the unfairness if the initial outcome is unfair.
An outcome is only unfair in relation to a particular process being unfair. If a process is fair, then its outcomes are fair, even if the result are inequalities that are unfair due to a different process that impacted the inputs to the fair process. For example, if either nature or early-in-life parenting practices give females a disposition less suited to programming, then it could be said that nature or parents are "unfair", but a process that hires programmers based upon job-relevant disposition is not unfair and does not produce unfair outcomes just because it ends up with fewer female programmers. In that situation, it might be "unfair" that there are fewer women programmers, but this is because the outcome of the prior processes were unfair, but the hiring processes was still fair and its
produces fair outcomes because that fairness is judged relative to whether the outcomes are what a fair process would produce, given what it had to work with. The extreme case that illustrates this is that an unfair world might lead to zero females applying for any programming jobs, but the hiring process itself cannot reasonably be claimed to produce unfair outcomes simply because only males are hired. The unfair inequalities are not produced by that hiring process so it cannot be said that the hiring process produced unfair outcomes or that the hiring "standards are not really fair", as you claimed. Another example is when one child gets to stay up later than a younger sibling and the younger one screams "That isn't fair!!!". Your argument is equal to this sentiment of the younger child. However, adults explain to them that age is what makes sense to determine bedtime, thus the inequality of bedtimes is a fair outcome of the process generated by the bedtime rule, even though it might not be "fair" that the younger child is younger.
One would think that logic is simple to follow. It is basically a variation of "garbage in, garbage out".
If you understood what that phrase meant, you'd know that it is used to indicate that the fault in no way lies with any unfairness or weakness of the process or the standards by which the process determined its outcomes, but rather that the undesirable result is due to an undesirable state of reality prior to the process in question. IOW the "garbage" or unfairness is not an outcome of the process in question but rather a pre-existing condition that a perfectly sound and fair process would not be expected to be able to fix. IOW, a perfect and fair hiring system will produce unequal group outcomes, because the groups are not equal to begin with and a fair process cannot fix that pre-existing condition.
The issue is what to do (if anything) about that unfairness.
Which cannot be rationally or morally addressed without identifying and specifying what process the unfairness is in relation to, since fairness meaningless outside of a particular relation to a particular process.
If Google wishes to deal with this perceived unfairness by identifying applicants with high potential and educating them, what exactly is the problem?
What that actually means is that Google would take on the task of making its own hiring processes unfairly racist and sexist, in order to try and produce outcomes that "fix" the unfair outcomes of "life" in general that produced inequalities in the only factors that any fair hiring process would use.
Google is already using unfair racist and sexist practices toward this end, but they are unhappy that it isn't enough to produce perfectly equal outcomes. Part of Google's problem is that they underestimate the extent to which white males are over-represented among qualified applicants, including those with at least the qualifications and interest needed to be trained up by the company. Thus, even their current outreach efforts and sexist and racist favoritism toward under-represented groups (i.e., affirmative action hiring policies) is insufficient to produce representation equal to the population at large. The problem is that Google is feeling responsible for a continued inequality in outcomes that is not only not in any way created by their own procedures but that they cannot do anything to completely rectify short of using strict hiring quotas that require hiring by race and gender even when it requires hiring highly unqualified people that are unlikely to ever be trained to be as competent as the applicants they reject due to being white males. They'd be better off funding early education programs that use race and gender quotas for who can participate. While equally sexist, racist, and unfair in procedures, such programs would at least produce an increase in the underrepresented applicants that are both qualified and have sufficient interest when it comes time to hire them at their company.
