There are some who will characterize this as Ms. Warren playing the proverbial “gender card,” a term Chris Matthews of MSNBC actually used in a post-debate wrap-up. This accusation gets thrown around by people with race or gender privilege who don’t want to talk about or acknowledge their own potential bigotry in an attempt to make those without race or gender privilege feel guilty for accurately assessing reality.

But Ms. Warren was right to push the conversation on gender and the presidency, and what we know about race and elections can tell us why. Nearly 20 years ago, the Princeton political scientist Tali Mendelberg’s book “The Race Card” examined Republicans’ use of implicit racial messages and their impact on voters. She found that when implicit racial messages were exposed, they lost their effectiveness. Focusing primarily on the 1980s, her research points to crucial miscalculation by the Democratic Party. They thought talking about race would turn off white voters, but their silence created a fertile environment for implicit racial messages to flourish.

Though it is not a one-to-one comparison, there are surely some parallels here. The pervasiveness of white male leadership has created the expectation that all leaders should be white and male. It gives them an edge before the process even begins. But this kind of implicit bias can be overcome by simply rendering the decision-making processes visible. Put simply, the effects of implicit bias dissipate when the source of bias is highlighted and addressed. Ms. Warren asking the questions about gender and electability and then offering sound answers to concerns people might have was the right move.

Historic leaps are often accompanied by doubts about the consequences of change, but change is still necessary. It was necessary to break racial barriers by electing the first African-American president. It said something important about the nation, as did the subsequent racial backlash. It is now necessary to shatter what Hillary Clinton has called the “highest and hardest glass ceiling.” In hindsight, Barack Obama was elected in a much more tolerant moment than we are in now. He ran by positioning himself as a quintessential American success story. In the current era, the only way to confront divisions is to confront them, which is what Ms. Warren did.

But implicit bias is not the same as overt sexism. Overt sexists already have a candidate they can rally around — the president. There is no answer Ms. Warren or any other woman can provide that will change the thinking that sees women as inferior. To the extent that their minds can be changed, that is more interpersonal and up-close work, not the work of presidential candidates.