When the 'Ornamental Pots' Aren't Optional
Conditional citizenship is still tied to achievement for migrants and minorities
News & Reviews Magazine
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The piece you’re reading now is by Ruimin Gao. Ruimin Gao is an international disputes lawyer and mother of two, currently writing from Brisbane (Meanjin).
When Bri Lee’s book Who Gets to Be Smart came out a few years ago, it had been a long time since I last set foot in Australia’s sandstone universities. After a hard slog over many years to get my degrees, I had thrown myself into an interesting legal career without looking back. My work gave me a ticket to leave the small world of Brisbane where I had grown up and took me to new horizons in Canberra, Sydney and London.
On my first day at the international law firm where I worked in London, I was introduced to a hefty line-up of lawyers—each more impressive than the last—who had, without exception, all graduated from Oxbridge or Ivy League universities. Not only that, the two colleagues who started at the same time as me both had PhDs and upcoming book publications.
As the day progressed, panicked thoughts were racing in my mind: Had I missed a memo? Was I supposed to be here? Like Lee when she visited Oxford University at the start of her book, I felt a sense of wonderment at the brilliance around me that was coupled with a sinking feeling of inadequacy.
My own reaction caught me by surprise, since I thought I had already reached a point in my life where the pull of chasing degrees and academic achievements—memorably described by Virginia Woolf as ‘highly ornamental pots’—had subsided. Intellectually, at least, I knew that my worth was not tied to those ornamental pots. Yet the clouds of insecurity still drifted in my mind.
Looking back now, if I examine my panic more closely, there was another fundamental layer of fear that was more instinctively tied up with identity and survival. For Lee, by the end of her book, the spell is broken and she sees the ornamental pots for the illusion that they are. Whereas for me, having grown up in Australia as a Chinese migrant, the pots I had been chasing had never been merely ornamental. Rather, they were like chainmail—badges of honour pinned prominently to my lapel to announce that I, too, can belong in this country even if I look different and have a name that people can’t pronounce.