Well, not hard if you know your craft/art. 
I never used Shirley cards. Everyone I knew used the two sided 18% grey / 90% white cards from Kodak or Macbeth Colour Checkers. I had seen Shirleys described in older books.
the flash was an African invention.
Same problem at the other end of the spectrum. I used to do a little wildlife photography. Got some nice pictures of great blue herons, but I always had problems with snowy egrets- they’d just be blown-out white blobs.
Bloody cameras.
Coming over here
Taking our pictures.
Probably less “racist”, and more “responding to market conditions”. How many white people between the 1940s and 1995 had cameras vs. other people in the US?
People seem to forget that the US was overwhelmingly white in those days, and even now, is roughly 2/3 non-Hispanic white. And, when you consider that socio-economic status correlates very highly with ethnic group in the US, it’s not surprising that manufacturers would aim to satisfy the white, relatively affluent majority before they’d bother with other ethnic groups who don’t buy nearly so many of their cameras, or for that matter, any other consumer object.
Beyond that, very dark or light skin would play havoc with light meters much like snow or predominantly dark scenes would. The photographer would have to over/underexpose the film to get a good skin exposure, and film tends to react better to overexposure (more light than the ideal exposure) than underexposure.
When photographers take a photo, the metering system is basically saying that the average of the brightness of the photo is 18% gray, which is a fairly dark gray. For most pictures, it works. But if the picture is of say… a snowy front yard with a snowman, it’s going to make the photo darker, because it’s taking this bright scene and underexposing it until it’s an average of 18% gray. Photographers need to deliberately overexpose the picture so that it’s the actual bright white of reality.
Similarly, really dark scenes tend to be overexposed by the meter, because it tries to let more light in to compensate for the dark scene to make it 18% gray. Photographers need to underexpose dark scenes deliberately, so that the camera lets in the right amount of light.
So when the film is underexposed, it tends to not take such a great photo, and that’s a function of film technology, not any inherent racism.
The ideal skin tone for not causing issues would probably be a medium-dark brown- much like say… Halle Berry or Beyonce’s skin. Someone like Nicole Kidman or Idris Elba might have a little more trouble.
You want to know what weird? This isn’t the first time I’ve heard “Cameras are racist”.
A friend of mine at work was complaining that his face doesn’t show up as well as mine does of our work badges. His claim was that “Cameras are racist!” (He was kidding)
Do tell.
So you are saying that black people are inherently worse at being photographed. 
Except for basketball players.
The problem with that is that, the way digital cameras work, too little light means not a lot of variation in brightness. You try to increase the brightness of really dark looking things, and it looks rather blotchy.
I know, I’ve worked on fixing a photo for a darker skinned friend. And she’s not all that dark, either.
Very durable, but they can only do spot checks.
Not quite true, they can also make the green one red.
It’s hard to imagine that making pleasing and clear images of people whom the world considered worth photographing wasn’t one of the things we made sure cameras did pretty well. I imagine this would have translated to a somewhat racist establishment of priorities, though as far as I know not consciously racist.
To provide a factual answer here (as a photographer):
No, there’s nothing about the technology that makes this a problem. However, the photographer needs to account for different skin tones (as well as the background) when metering a scene and compensate accordingly. In some cases, lighting may need to change in order to properly illuminate darker skin, but this is on the photographer. The camera just tries to average everything.
Stop “imagining” and read and understand the actual facts being given to you by people who know what they are talking about in this thread.
Can’t you just tell me why you apparently disagree? I did read the other posts and know quite a lot about photography and racism. What’s wrong?
This thread reminds me that Cicely Tyson was very frustrated during production of The Blue Bird, which was filmed in Russia. Lighting was set up with stand ins, who were all white, and the Russians didn’t know how to light for black people in any case. Briefly mentioned here.