Let me back up one small step and briefly apologize. I'm doing the whole 'everyone who disagrees with me is an idiot' thing that I dislike so much in others. Like many, I have strong feelings on this topic.
No, that is not the underlying cause of the looting. People just like to loot when there's a good excuse to do it. Also, the majority of the stores looted were small businesses owned by minorities.
We probably have incommensurate opinions here. I think that the riots are fundamentally caused by the belief in these citizens that the police are a violent, adversarial force that targets people of color. I don't think that this belief is arbitrary or asinine, and I think that it reflects an empirically demonstrable bias/discrimination/oppression/whatever of persons of color in America.
What exactly is systematic and state-sponsored about this?
The shooting of Michael Brown was state-sponsored, and many people of color who distrust the police do so precisely because the use of force by police feels (and empirically is) disproportionally targeted at them.
And I mean today. Not in the past. Sure, there are some pricks who are racist, but there are no laws that uphold racism.
In this specific case there is evidence to back up an assault and that shots were fired in self defense in what seemed to be a struggle (backed up by the autopsy). Are you telling me it's a conspiracy to frame a black teenager so that the blacks will stay in their place? Do you have specific examples and laws to back up your outrage?
It's at this point that I don't know where to go in the discussion. I don't mean that backhandedly, but we probably simply have incommensurate opinions on the degree to which racial inequality still exists in America. I think racial inequality in America today is still quite pronounced. No, we don't have laws that explicitly prohibit people of color from voting or whatever, but I don't think racial inequality can be measured or understood in such narrow terms. Jim Crow laws weren't actual laws, but they undoubtedly had a material impact on people of color in their day. Racial inequality doesn't require conspiracies or state-sponsorship.
Also, remember that there are thousands of people living in Ferguson today who were alive and remember when the federal government absolutely did target people of color as threats to national security and treated them as such.