Responding to Anger
Public Art on Park Lane, Kirkland, WA, August 2020
Responding to Anger
Picture a toddler having a temper tantrum. It’s an experience most parents have had. It’s sometimes hard to figure out what triggered it, but it could be simply the wrong food put on a dinner plate or some other child wanting to borrow a favorite toy.
As adults, we sometimes experience the same strong emotions as children, but we understand that temper tantrums and violent rages are usually not appropriate responses.
Instead we might:
1. Bottle up our rage and stew about it for hours, days or months.
2. Change ourselves or our environment to avoid future problems.
3. Use our anger as a motivator to work for constructive change that helps ourselves, and society.
In 1975, I was a relatively new attorney with a downtown Seattle business practice law firm. I was the first and only female attorney at the firm. Women attorneys were still somewhat of a novelty in the Seattle area. One day I was invited to join in a business lunch in honor of the incoming and outgoing bank managers of a major client. Our firm receptionist reserved a table for us in the Harbor Club dining room, on the top floor of the Norton Building. A senior partner of our law firm was president of the club, so we had a lot of meetings there. It was an important event for me because I did a significant amount of work for the bank and getting better acquainted with clients makes it easier to have a good working relationship. Young male associates seemed to get more invitations to client meetings than I did, so I wanted to make a good impression.
For most of us, it would not be a big deal if a reserved table is not immediately available. It wasn’t for me either, until there was a long wait, and we eventually were seated at a portable table, set up hurriedly behind a screen in the lobby, with the explanation that the dining room was reserved for men only. I was startled by my strong reaction to this incident. I was embarrassed and angry that no one apologized to me, that no one at the firm seemed concerned about what happened, or the effect it might have had on me. Looking back on the incident 45 years later, all I remember is my frustration and anger, nothing about the content of the meeting itself. Those feelings made it hard to fully participate in or remember the discussion with the clients.
I think about the dining room incident when I hear about teen-age vandalism, civil unrest, racial tension and even wars. The reason for those associations is because anger usually isn’t just about the immediate situation. Anger, rage, and violence are often the culmination of a series of frustrations and mistreatments. Some of those relatively minor incidents are today referred to as “microaggressions.” When I first heard that term, it helped me better understand some of my experiences.
Back in 1975, I responded to the Harbor Club incident by drafting letters for the Washington Women Lawyers organization to send to the three exclusionary men’s clubs we were most familiar with. The letter, signed by another member on behalf of the organization, argued that the clubs needed to change their membership policies. Copies of the letters were sent to local papers. The Seattle Times published several articles on the issue of discrimination by private clubs. One of the articles quoted the letter I had drafted:
“when private clubs are used as a means of furthering business contacts, they must be open to women to assure equal employment conditions for women. … A law firm or other business which pays for or partially subsidizes the use of discriminatory facilities may be engaging in unlawful employment practices.”
By 1977, two years later, all three clubs had changed their bylaws to allow women to fully participate. It was also in 1977, that my law firm decided I wasn’t a good match for the firm and terminated my employment. There had been enough indignities while I was there, that I wasn’t really surprised. I was proud of the work I had done for the firm during more than four years of employment and proud of helping to create a path forward for the many women who came after me at the firm. I played an important role in getting private clubs to admit women and helping employers to understand the necessity of a fair playing field for all employees. As I was leaving the firm, one of the male attorneys who had just become a partner, told me that, if our sexes had been switched, he thought I would have been the partner and he would have been going out the door. I was surprised to hear this from him, because he had never seemed to be particularly sympathetic to issues of discrimination. However, I totally agreed with that assessment.
My challenge to you is to think about situations that have angered you,
(1) Was your anger because of a past or current injustice?
(2) Was your anger justified?
(3) Did you create a game plan for avoiding or eliminating the trigger for your anger?
(4) Did you take steps toward elimination of the injustice for your benefit and for those who would come after you?
The Black Lives Matter movement is helping us better understand that a pattern of past injustices, such as innumerable microaggressions, contributes to later outrage and a demand for systemic change. Let’s all do our part to implement strategies that will result in equity and fairness for all. When injustices occur, let’s use our anger to fuel our work for a better world.