A lot of talk is about hiring practices (like blind assessments), or retention. But that ignores a question that should be easy to answer: are there a significant number of qualified "diverse" applicants that could be hired with the right approach?

I seriously doubt any qualified developer would have troubles landing a job, regardless of race. Therefore I think the talk about hiring practices and cultural exclusion are misguided. Looking at the pipeline might be more promising, but it seems even Google can not turn the lives of millions of people around single-handedly.