Discrimination may be illegal on the ground of sex, sexual orientation, race, religion, disability, or nationality. A central problem is how to define discrimination, both in its most basic direct sense and in the most prominent variations.Synonym discernment He showed great discrimination in his choice of friends. Meanings, etymology, pronunciation and more in the Oxford English Dictionary. "Validation of the Detroit area study discrimination scale in a community sample of older African American adults: the Pittsburgh healthy heart project. (d) Discrimination: unfavorable treatment of a person based on that person's membership or perceived membership in a protected class. Microaggressions are brief, everyday, derogatory slights or insults that communicate hostility and bias (eg, racism, sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, etc.) In a study of African American youth, Clark et al.