By that reasoning, refusing to hire someone who doesn't have good recommendations, is discrimination, because you're giving him distinguishing treatment (refusing to hire him) based on membership in a category (people who lack good recommendations).
I think you have some assumptions that you need to make explicit, after thinking them through first. (For instance, one obvious change is to replace "category" with "irrelevant category", but that won't work.)
Well, the recommendations you have are to some extent the result of your choices and actions, but whether your name sounds black hardly is. So, regret-of-rationality considerations apply more to the former than to the latter.
Another month has passed and here is a new rationality quotes thread. The usual rules are: