Tim Kaine pushed whites off a jury in the late-1980s, and that decision has become an issue in the presidential debate as concerns about racial issues heat up.

Kaine, the running mate of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, wrote an article for the University of Richmond Law Review in 1989 in which he described striking three potential jurors solely because they were white. He explained at the time that he sought "to increase the odds that the jury would have at least one black representative."

The move, which was brought to light in an article published Monday in The Daily Beast, has been both applauded and criticized. After a 1991 Supreme Court ruling that said potential jurors could not be eliminated based solely on their race, the practice of race-based jury selection continues to this day, The Daily Beast said.

"He was ahead of the curve on this," Stephen Bright of the Southern Center for Human Rights said of Kaine. "He was out in front of the Supreme Court, and not very many people raised these ethical issues that he raised."

In his article, Kaine admitted that the practice was "ethically suspect," but said, “The notion that common stereotypes have some truth cannot, as a factual matter, be completely denied. While conventional wisdom about how different ethnic groups respond in civil or criminal trials has not withstood statistical studies, the notion that a juror may be more inclined toward a party of her own race is not necessarily a racist assumption unsupported by facts.”

Others called the practice troubling.

"Does he really think blacks think differently, that they’re going to be prejudiced in how they vote on the jury?" Ronald Rotunda, a libertarian-leaning attorney and a professor at the Chapman University School of Law said, according The Daily Beast. "I would think they, like other people, would do their best to follow the judge’s instructions, that’s what people try to do. It’s really kind of offensive to say, 'I want you there because I know what you’re going to think.' That’s troubling."

The issue has come to light as Clinton and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump exchange accusations that the other is bad for African-Americans and other minorities, The Washington Examiner noted.

Twitter users shared mixed reactions to the new revelations.

RACISM, STRAIGHT UP: Hillary Clinton running mate Tim Kaine once blocked three potential jurors fro… https://t.co/gPeRlocfeS — Rambling Mother (@RamblingMother) August 30, 2016

So Tim Kaine's a racist? Oh it's against white ppl. Nevermind, that's OK https://t.co/AosObKO10K — Punch Rockgroin (@DadLibertarian) August 30, 2016