To me, it oversimplifies history to simply fault Gov. Tim Walz for allowing three days of violent protest in Minneapolis before calling in the National Guard.

One can never condone violence or looting, but the Black anger expressed in the rioting came from suffering lifelong disrespect or disdain, in particular in encounters with the police. It’s enraging to be treated disrespectfully when you’re just a person with a certain color skin trying to live your life. When mistreatment becomes routine, the anger just builds.

So here, all of a sudden, an entire sector of a population has lost it. The first impulse might be to charge in with troops trained to issue orders, and to shoot. At that point, a thoughtful leader will ask: Will that help tamp things down, or perhaps make them worse? It’s not easy, and maybe not even smart, to stifle such accumulated outrage.

If Gov. Walz had instantly and righteously mustered the forces at his command, it likely would have been seen as oppression in a different uniform. It might have exacerbated the immediate situation, cost more lives, and done nothing for the long term.

It took the state justice system a full year to put physical restraint on Derek Chauvin after the fatal violence of his knee on Floyd’s neck — a year before he was incarcerated. There’s good reason for such a lag: It allows more deliberate, better-informed action — on behalf of not just order, but justice, the quality that opens the cycle of respect that underlies public order.

It’s easy to think of riots as something to be put down, period. But anger is like water turning to steam, and there’s no keeping a lid on boiling water for very long. I see riots as spasms of common pain to learn from and grow, both as a society and as individuals.

Perhaps Walz’s delay shows a restraint that is quietly working on behalf of longer-term public order in the post-George Floyd world. No one can say. But it’s sometimes wise to let somebody smash plates, to hold back on the urge to quell rampaging expressions of anger. And even wiser to find the anger’s source.

I bet Derek Chauvin wishes he’d held back on his reflex to still and silence a struggling man.

Jonathan von Ranson lives in Wendell.