I’ll agree with Ben regarding one thing, race wasn’t a factor guilty or not. I don’t know how anyone can say that Derek put his knee on his neck because he was racist. Zero evidence for that
It's entirely irrelevant if Derek Chauvin loved Black people at the time he put his knees on George Floyd -- the response by Black people, framed in racial terms, was justifiably right for many reasons. The central point of the racialized upheaval was the abuse the police directed at Black men through broad historical and recurrent patterns in the timeline, which can only be explained by racial bias.
People responded to the obvious criminal murder in the sense that they are tired of Black men being killed by these cops with impunity, reacting to the dehumanizing realities without legal reprimand. That is why the socio-political racial tensions grew, and it was directed towards that cause, to change it.
We had many white Americans watching the footage, arguing for Chauvin's case by saying it was good practice. That racist environment is what warranted the racial backlash. You saying Chauvin was not motivated by racism is, again, irrelevant to why people responded and racialized the matter because you gloss over the asymmetrical racial dimentions in America where something like that can happen and people further saying it is good without much justice happening toward the cops that do these acts toward the Black men. That is a racist environment.
And it is not systemic racism, it's racists who use the system with that bias. There is a reason why KKK members can have local meetings in churches without them ever getting caught by the police or ever being tried for spreading ideologically harmful extremism, which is not allowed legally, but only get punished when they do heinous actions. They are allowed to organize and openly talk about a generational genocide against Blacks, but none of them face any consequences for spreading such ideology. It's illegal to cultivate such culture in America by law, but how many times have you seen them be punished by the law and sent to prison? Their leaders are free, having not seen law enforcement for a long time. On the other hand, you have RICO, something used against the mafia, directed at the common Black criminal.
A lot of Americans just don't want to admit that a big section of society is deeply racist, and that it is not the system but the people who carry those biases. The right wing is correct, systemic racism does not exist, but there is racism that is carried out in systemic ways by individuals who are racist.
It does not change that Black Lives Matter was a subversive hyper-leftis organization with shitty corrupt leaders but the underlying sentiment they based themselves on was very much true. They had no right spearheading any Black causes, but somebody had to take up the mantle and speak on it from a Black interests perspective. The vandalism that occurred on normal businesses was wrong, regardless. Although, unlike what many racists want to say, it does not undervalue the injustice and rightful cause to socio-politically level the field in such that Black people are not facing such harm since the people in the system have a strong racial bias against them.
The Karmelo Anthony killing was not racial, but you see how whites made it very racial.