alexandraerin

For something like a webcam (a cheap consumer item), they probably tested it under optimal conditions until everything worked. Then they grabbed two guys at random from the testing team and had them test other scenarios. In all likely hood, one of them was not African American (12.4% of the population) and was light skinned enough that the system worked fine.

I don't work at HP but I have worked at places where that is essentially the testing model used. And considering how HP does a crappy job of testing in general, it is quite likely what happened. If that pair of people happened to include a black person (which would probably happen about ~25% of the time).

So, unless they are willing to pay more for testing (which cuts into their profit margin), it is unlikely to happen.

That makes the 'solution':
A) Stop using Capitalism which encourages this sort of behaviour as laying out an extra $Xk or so to test every possible combination of race cuts into a product's profit margin.
B) Boycott companies that do this sort of thing to encourage more complete testing methodologies in regards to race and encourage others to do so.

Also, I have bought a webcamera from HP (the one and only time I've ever bought anything from HP, and will never again) which can't focus on my white face and I have to do it manually. So I suspect HP's QA process really is this bad.