(NewsNation) — Issues of identity and society, including race and gender roles have become increasingly politically divisive in recent years. NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson debated those hot topics in their conversation on “CUOMO.”

That includes replacement theory, a view that Democrats are encouraging immigrants to come to the U.S. to replace people, a philosophy that has been connected to white supremacism. Carlson pushed back against that characterization.

“I’ve never said white people, I said the current, aka people who are born here, many of them are not white. I don’t know how we get to white people,” Carlson said.

Carlson also called out the media for what he says is attacking people because of their skin color when it comes to coverage of white Americans.

“Because it is substituting a level playing field where there isn’t one, they didn’t have the opportunities early on to build up the tools that a lot of white people did because of what they call now ‘privilege,'” Cuomo argued. “But really, it’s opportunity.”

Carlson argued white people are discriminated against in college admissions and hiring, arguing that discrimination against non-white people ended in 1965.

“How is it that the people in charge are mostly white, but they hate whites?” Cuomo asked.

Carlson admitted he didn’t have a good answer to that but argued that any system that takes race into account winds up benefitting some and harming others based on skin color.

“How do you enable equality? If it’s not going to happen naturally?” Cuomo responded.

“If you could find a way that wouldn’t let some people sit in the front row and others sit in the balcony, then we could talk about it,” Carlson responded.