I know this is going to come across as an apologia for building highways through poor neighborhoods, but I see that as a natural consequence of the land simply being cheaper to acquire. I'm not denying that there was possibly some racial malice in the planning. It just seems obvious to me a government with limited funding is going to put the infrastructure through the cheapest path it can find. It was still a terrible thing to do to those neighborhoods, however.
The key argument against this is that many of the planned highways were also supposed to go through richer neighborhoods, but never got constructed because the residents of those neighborhoods were able to successfully fight against them.
(For one example, check out the incomplete stub at the eastern terminus of I-70 -- I don't believe the cost of the land was a major factor in that case)
