Discrimination is a concept prevalent in the 20th century, held especially by American liberals, that claims an injustice is done by society when individuals of equal ability are treated unequally. This assumes that differences in race, gender, disability, or sexual orientation do not have an effect on a person's behavior or functioning. In other words, liberal views of discrimination regard all humans as basically equal, despite their individual differences, and therefore deserving of equal treatment by the law and society.

An older view of humanity, in Aristotle, also premises discrimination on equality. Aristotle held that it is as unjust to treat people who are different (unequal) the same as it is to treat people who are the same differently. Human distinctions that should be respected include culture, age, gender, and nationality. To treat individuals of unequal ability (say a C student and an A student) as equals would be as unfair as treating two persons of equal ability unequally. The Greek philosopher Plato asserted that humans could be divided into three distinct categories: (1) the intellectual, (2) the spirited, and (3) the economic. Each group, in Plato's Republic, should receive a distinct education suited to their abilities and a position in society using their talents. To treat all equally would be an injustice, for Plato.

In the middle ages, St. Thomas Aquinas combined Aristotelian philosophy with Christianity and held that three groups in society (priests, soldiers, and rulers) are different by nature and deserve different treatment and laws.

The modern idea of discrimination as a purely negative or unjust action comes from the liberalism of John Locke, which viewed humans as by nature equal as members of the same species. Locke held that the state should treat individuals equally before the law because of that shared humanity. But the law treating individuals equally was to be limited to protecting their individual liberty and property. Twentieth-century American liberalism expanded this to use the state to impose equality on private organizations and relationships. Now, discrimination came to mean excluding anyone from something they desire (schooling, jobs, status) on the basis of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, or disability. Such discrimination implies an absolute equality and any denial of that sameness as unjust. The social effect of this doctrine has been the racial and sex integration of schools, businesses, the military, professions, and government.

In the United States, such equalizing policies have been associated with affirmative action or diversity, which actively recruited minorities and women who had previously been excluded from positions and institutions. The resistance to perceived reverse discrimination and revised opinions on the positive aspects of cultural, ethnic, gender, and racial uniqueness has caused a reappraisal of the concept of discrimination. The value of programs for the "gifted" and artistic programs for certain talented children, the apparently innate but complementary differences between the ways men and women think and communicate, and the preservation of distinctive cultural and religious heritages have balanced the current definition of social discrimination.

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