I think the questions were scripted and intentionally specific. What do you think they were unaware of? It seems like the interviewer had a deep understanding of the works. Nothing wrong with asking a deep and detailed question,to which Powell can engage or glide past.

As an aside, I think a huge number of people think the liberal racism bit is spot on. As translated elsewhere in this thread, "erasing representation to avoid the discomfort of confronting racism" is a real phenomenon.