For the first time since she became the Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris directly addressed Donald Trump’s false claims about her ethnic identity and also addressed the former president’s history of racial segregation throughout his public life.

During the night of Tuesday Presidential debateTrump was asked why he felt comfortable falsely claiming during a recent appearance at a conference of black journalists that the Vice President “turned black” after previously emphasizing her South Asian heritage. Harris, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, rejected the assumption that she had to defend her own ethnic identity.

But Trump, standing just a few feet away from Harris, claimed he was no longer interested in the issue.

“I don’t care what she is,” Trump said. “I don’t care at all. Whatever she wants to be is fine with me.”

He then repeated falsehoods about Harris’ identity, saying, “All I can say is that I read that she wasn’t black… And then I read that she was black, and that’s OK. I was OK with either. That’s her business.”

In a recent televised interview as the Democratic candidate, a CNN journalist asked Harris to respond to Trump’s remarks about her race. She curtly dismissed his comments as “the same old maneuver.”

But on Tuesday she took the time to address the issue directly.

“Frankly, I think it’s a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president but has, over and over again, tried to divide the American people over race,” Harris said.

Harris then incorporated Trump’s comments into her broader criticism of the former president, whom her campaign portrays as divisive and backwards in a country weary of bombast. Although Harris would be a breakthrough candidate if elected as the country’s first woman of color president, her campaign has downplayed such portrayals, focusing instead on themes of freedom and unity.

“I believe that the vast majority of us know that we have so much more in common than what divides us, and we do not want this approach that constantly tries to divide us, especially along racial lines,” she added.

Harris then reminded the debate of Trump’s decades-long history of racial segregation, dating back to the time when the Justice Department examined him and his father, Fred Trump Sr., for refusing to rent to black tenants. She then mentioned that he had called for the death penalty for the “Central Park Five,” black and Latino teenagers falsely accused of rape in New York City in the late 1980s, which Trump defended in a brief rebuttal.

“Many people, including Mayor (Michael) Bloomberg, agreed with me about the Central Park Five,” Trump said before falsely claiming that the teens had pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting and brutally beating a white female jogger in 1989.

The convictions of the five wrongfully convicted young men were overturned in 2002 after evidence linked another person to the crime. In the spin room after the debate, Yussef Salaam, one of the five exonerated men, held up a sign with his name on it as Trump walked around the room speaking to reporters. Salaam was also elected to the New York City Council last year.

Harris pointed out during the debate that Trump was spreading false “birther” theories that President Barack Obama was unfit to be president because he was born abroad and does not have a U.S. birth certificate.

“I think the American people want something better, want something better than this,” Harris said.

“I meet people all the time who say to me, can we please just talk about how we invest in the hopes, ambitions and dreams of the American people, knowing that no matter the color of people’s skin or the language their grandmother speaks, we all have the same dreams and hopes and we want a president who invests in those and not in hatred and division,” Harris continued.

Civil rights activist Marc Morial of the National Urban League said he viewed Harris’ overall performance in the debate as “masterful.”

“She provoked him and tested him beautifully,” he said in a telephone interview after Tuesday night’s debate. “She was prepared, she was disciplined, and she provoked him and threw him off track.”

On the issue of race, Harris criticized Trump for his rhetoric and his troubling record, Morial added.

“By mentioning the Central Park Five and bringing the lawsuits against him, she brought important facts into his long, long history before his presidency,” he said. “His response was a continuation of the kind of blatant disrespect for black America that has been part of his career.”