You are incorrect that standards have not been lowered in the past.
It may still not be the fact (I'll use women in tactical military aviation as an example that I lived through), but don't be fooled into believing that it never happened.
I'll agree with you about equally qualified people being held to the same standard and given equal opportunity. This society can always works towards the goal; but there will always be injustices of some sort. People, and thus societies, are flawed.

You know what this world's racial history is right?
Let's even take it back to a smidgen of the OP's original question of American Indian heritage. What do you have to say of the *injustices* perpetrated amongst the Native Americans - or does it not matter if such things happen in the same ethnic groups?

I had a family member visit from the northeast this Christmas season. She asked about the origins of the state nickname 'Sooners'. I related to her the story of the landrush for the unassigned lands in the Indian Territory. This prompted her to get all huffy and wanted to talk about the *taking* of Indian lands. I asked her where the *white* people of her part of the country got their lands I also asked her if she thought that the native indian populations had ever fought over territory or natural resources. I think the blank face and garbled excuses that followed said it all.