What you described sounds like a product flaw. Customers/users won't want to use a product that delivers sub-optimal results. Any internal employee saying "hey, we have an error rate of X% for this Y segment, and they represent Z% of the user base" isn't engaging in controversial political discussion (in my opinion).
However, if an individual chose to describe this flaw in more loaded language, it could easily turn political and combative for the team.
If AI/ML says someone “fits the description” what better feature than being able to blame it on the computer? If law enforcement was willing to deal with the flaw, and if tech companies were willing to sell it to them, what’s to stop an unscrupulous company from continuing to sell it if they didn’t get push back?
It would never have shipped with a product flaw that frequently caused it to classify white people as something insulting.
I do think your comment here, with an unprovable statement about an immutable characteristic, stated with absolute certainty, would invite toxic political discussions.
Speaking with humility, and honestly trying to improve processes to yield better results, is the type of communication that I advocate for on teams I'm involved with.
Of course they never would have shipped it if it didn't recognize white faces. And the big isn't in the software, the bug is that the companies producing this stuff don't have a single solitary person of color either working on the product or testing it that would have certainly noticed that it doesn't work on them or said they were an animal, etc.
To this day, our home security system sometimes recognizes my big Black stepson as an “animal.”
Facial recognition that was used by law enforcement, mis recognized minorities far more than Whites.