Discrimination is unfair treatment of one particular person or group of people. Direct discrimination.This means treating someone less favourably than someone else because of a protected characteristic. Discrimination is the unfair treatment of one person or a group of people based on their characteristics. How do you believe that the two laws that prohibited segregation and racial discrimination in voting changed the lives of African Americans? Civil rights protect every one of us, not just some of us. They insure that each citizen is protected from discrimination under the law. Race discrimination does not need to be deliberate. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.