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From the library of Bob Sheldon

Posted on February 17, 2011 by Staff

Dan Coleman

When your friend is an intellectual, it is often the case that his library is a window not only into his mind but to his heart. When my friend Internationalist Books’ founder Bob Sheldon was murdered 20 years ago this week, I felt the best way to keep his memory alive was to select a few of his books as keepsakes.

Most remember Bob for his radical-left politics and would be surprised that his most prized books were not from the Marxist cannon. He particularly valued two books by educators, one Brazilian, one American, and a third by a Vietnamese monk.

Bob Sheldon was deeply engaged with the struggles of oppressed peoples, whether Lumbee, Palestinian or Salvadoran, and named his store accordingly. Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed analyzes education as a political act and, in doing so, has much to say about a system of oppression that dehumanizes victims and perpetrators alike.

Bob’s heaviest pencil-markings highlight this passage, an affirmation of universal humanity that informed the great moral leaders of the 20th century, such as Gandhi, King and Mandela: “As the oppressors dehumanize others and violate their rights, they themselves also become dehumanized. As the oppressed, fighting to be human, take away the oppressors’ power to dominate and suppress, they restore to the oppressors the humanity they had lost in the exercise of oppression.”

Although Bob supported the anti-apartheid movement, he did not live to see Nelson Mandela become president of South Africa. Had he witnessed Mandela’s approach to racial reconciliation, it would surely have brought Freire’s words to mind.

Freire shares the critical perspective that Sheldon cast on the generous impulses of liberalism: “Pedagogy which begins with the egoistic interests of the oppressors and makes of the oppressed the objects of its humanitarianism, itself maintains and embodies oppression. … The pedagogy of the oppressed cannot be practiced by the oppressors.” This remains a challenging concept for we privileged Americans who struggle to effectively address injustice. It comes up, for instance, when we seek to understand whether Chapel Hill’s “Sanitation Two” were fired for insubordination or for organizing. Workers’ self-organization is almost inherently insubordinate, at least from the vantage point of those they work for.

Bob once told me his favorite book was Jonathan Kozol’s The Night Is Dark and I Am Far from Home. Writing from his perspective on the Boston public-school system, thousands of miles from Freire’s Brazil, Kozol comes to a remarkably similar conclusion. “Schools,” he writes, “cannot at once both socialize to the values of an oppressor and toil for the liberation and the potency of the oppressed.”

Kozol’s challenge to the liberal establishment, though different from Freire’s, is equally daunting. “The liberal myth is that the wars can cease, the poor can sleep, the schools can prosper, and the children of the poor can learn, aspire and thrive, while we who have for these long years enjoyed the proceeds of their hunger, segregation, and fear, need suffer nothing. It is not so.” Like Freire, Bob Sheldon was an outspoken critic of paternalistic campaigns for justice, understanding that just results cannot be achieved without some sacrifice of privilege.

One answer to the challenges of Freire and Kozol is found in the words of the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh. His book Being Peace outlines 14 precepts, two of which speak directly to the concerns above. “Do not close your eyes before suffering … awaken yourself and others to the reality of suffering in the world.” And, “Do not take as the aim of your life fame, profit, wealth, or sensual pleasure. Live simply and share time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need.” Bob Sheldon took these words to heart. To keep Internationalist afloat, he often worked seven-day weeks, taking shifts as a temp nurse to support the store and a simple lifestyle.

Bob kept the ideas in books like these alive at Internationalist Books and in his activism. Far from your stereotypic leftist, Bob Sheldon was a complex personality, what one friend called “a voice of radical calmness.” As his books reflect, his ardent intention was to challenge liberal society to find true solidarity with the oppressed and, ultimately, to understand how all humanity might come to a place of well-being and justice.

Dan Coleman is a member of the Carrboro Board of Aldermen.

1 thought on “From the library of Bob Sheldon”

  1. Erik France says:
    February 21, 2011 at 3:16 pm

    Thank you for this thoughtful piece. I can only attend today’s remembrance in spirit, as I’m posting this from TX. I knew Bob from the ealry 80s, and worked occasionally at Internationalist Books. Actually met him first when he was also working as a nurse, and we discussed a NACLA journal and Central America. He must have just started the original bookstore over near where Hectors used to be.

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