Replace the word 'algorithm' with 'person' or 'institution'. The politics around racial discrimination and bias means that in reality, few people do the work t

Replace the word 'algorithm' with 'person' or 'institution'. The politics around racial discrimination and bias means that in reality, few people do the work to tease apart (1) and (2). In particular, I think many people are extremely uncomfortable with the consequences that (2) being true entail. Hence 'racial bias' usually has a simpler meaning: something is biased if the decision conditioned on race is not identical to the unconditional decision. That encompasses both (1) and (2). You seem to ascribe some sort of malicious motive to the authors, when what you really have a problem with is how the country talks about race and racial bias in general. The point is that in general, statistically unbiased algorithms will not lead to racially unbiased (in the strict conditional outcome = unconditional outcome sense) results. You might think this is completely obvious as a practitioner in the field, but it is far from obvious to the general public. Hence why it's fair to point that out to the public.