With all Democrats hopeful that support from communities of color can give them an edge over President Donald Trump, Sen. Elizabeth Warren at Friday night’s debate pressed for “race-conscious laws” on a range of issues including criminal justice reform, housing and education.

Sparked by former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg trying to explain why marijuana arrests of African Americans rose under his watch, Warren said race “has permeated our criminal justice system.”

For the same crime, she said, African Americans were far more likely to be detained, arrested, tried, wrongfully convicted and receive harsher sentences.

She also noted that the country discriminated against African Americans by blocking them from buying homes in certain neighborhoods until 1965, and “you can’t just repeal that and say everything is even. It’s not.”

She called for adjustments in legislation and investments that could boost education, employment and entrepreneurship in communities of color.

Warren was challenged by businessman Andrew Yang, who said “you can’t legislate away racism.”

Yang and billionaire Tom Steyer called for reparations programs, with Yang specifically pushing for a guaranteed minimum income of $1,000 per month that would help “reshape our communities of color. We can’t regulate (racism) away through any other means except by" giving black and Latino people “buying power.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who has led recent New Hampshire polls and is neck-and-neck with Buttigieg with Iowa results still contested, said he agreed with Warren. Sanders described a “system that is broken and racist” and called for investments in health care, young people, jobs and education, not “more jails and incarceration.”

“We need to end the war on drugs which disproportionally impacted African Americans and Latinos,” he said, adding that he called for an end to private prisons.

“There’s no excuse that white families have 10 times more wealth than black families,” Sanders said. “No excuse for black women dying in child birth at three times the rate that white women do.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden, who has led in national polls and has strong support among African American voters, said “We’ve got to stop taking the black community for granted.”

Biden pushed for investments in rehabilitation centers, not prisons, and mandatory treatment instead of mandatory prison time.

“We should be investing our money in communities that haven’t gotten help for a long time,” Biden said.