[ryandrake]

While it may be true, it's off-topic for an article called "Why urban highways destroy wealth". Inserting a discussion about race here is like going into an article about how Company XYZ is a bad investment and pointing out that their hiring practices discriminate against women. Even if true, it's off-topic trolling, but apparently this kind of trolling is OK here. Live and learn.

[grardb]

>Someone posts a tl;dr about the article and says that the issues caused by creating urban highways are trade-offs that come with a solution to a different problem.

>Someone asks what problem urban highways are meant to solve.

>Someone answers the question, and the answer happens to involve race.

Would you have preferred if the question wasn't answered, so as to avoid a discussion on race? This isn't trolling, and it isn't off-topic. Very rarely do comments on the third level stay 100% relevant to the article being discussed. It sounds like you just don't like talking about race, and I bet it's easy to figure out why.

[kbenson]

> Very rarely do comments on the third level stay 100% relevant to the article being discussed.

Thank goodness. Some of the best, most interesting and informative comments come from discussions that digress into tangents. HN would be much less interesting without these.

[ethbro]

It doesn't happen a lot here, and it's absolutely relevant. You may not have a background in urban design / planning (I'm assuming), but racial politics has been a huge force historically.

It's not like people are bringing race into opinions about the primary colors here: this is relevant to the topic.