People in the mixed neighborhood off Lake Street in Minneapolis where the big protests were,
a) said they were sick and tired of police brutality
b) said looters came around their homes trying to sell the stuff they'd stolen
c) said they were furious at the looters dishonouring the dead man's memory, distracting people from the issue, and wrecking their neighborhoods, their neighbors' jobs, and their neighbor's businesses.
d) built barricades to keep the looters running from the police out
e) cheered and clapped the police and guard when they moved into the neighborhoods.
I don't think you can reduce this uproar to a single cause. I saw three of the faces of the police officers in the original incident -one white, one Asian, and one brown.
Going back a way, the black community in the US is different from others (including black people who found their way there by routes other than slavery). They were uprooted and their cultures crushed with consequences which continue play out in all sorts of problematic ways today.
Racism, guilt, fear and suspicion still permeate the response of whites and others to them, even the massive efforts made to "help".
And, in the short term, being bottled up and losing jobs have not helped either angry, bored youth or jumpy, tired, cops -some on both sides aching for a settling of accounts.
My Chinese based colleagues have contrasted it all unfavorably with HK protests. They say in HK the protests are part of a struggle to safeguard freedoms which the Americans take for granted. In America, it is just criminals and hooligans.
I think that's too simple, but I think in both cases, the vast majority of the protestors align with the vast majority of the population -we want our bit in terms of wealth, power, and status out of the world as it is. When the looters start burning down the house in pursuit of a new dawn, the rest back off in a hurry. If I'm right, the protests here will run out of steam as the emotion needed to sustain them dissipates. The ones in HK, it's harder to say. My worry is they'll bring the roof -in the shape of the PLA- down on everyone's heads and they'll all be worse off.