Jonathan Brumfield is a 36-year-old artist attending the Ethnic Studies graduate program at San Francisco State University. He is originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the east coast. He came to California when he was 11 years old. Jonathan met his son and his son’s mother when he was 25 years old and became a dad. His son, Kahlim Davis is 11. They currently reside in east Oakland. The following interview with Jonathan took place this Sunday on campus. I was delightfully surprised when I found out he brought Kahlim along to do his homework while Jonathan did the interview.
How many children do you have? How old are they?
Kahlim Davis, 11 years old
I wanted to make sure he had his mom’s last name.
How old were you when you had your first child?
I was 25. I met his mom when I was 25 and she was already a month pregnant with him. I met her when she came to our job before she got pregnant. I worked with youth, and she came in to get a job. Next time I saw her she was pregnant. She didn’t think I knew.
She came in to apply for the job, then she got the job, and then we went on a retreat. That’s when we finally got a chance to talk.
The program was Youth Opportunity. Jonathan says the program might still be around in San Francisco, but I checked and that specific program doesn’t come up.
We did everything. We were case managers, job placement specialists–so we placed young people in jobs– we did a lot of workshops around anything and everything from violence to sex to culture.
At what point in your life were you when Kahlim came into your life?
Man, it was strange. I had already been working with young people in my career. I was at a point in my life where I was definitely ready to have children. But it was just crazy how it happened because I think if she hadn’t been pregnant we would of wound having a biological child anyway. We were almost the same age basically. She was a year younger. She was 24 and I was 25, but not a full year, maybe eight months. We both were into hip-hop. The hip-hop part is what bonded us. She could make music and play any instrument. I was at a point in my life where that is what I was looking for, so it was cool the way it happened.
Her cousin asked me one day, “Do you like my cousin?” and I was like “Yea, why is that?” and he was like “She like you, but she ain’t gonna tell you” and her other cousin came and was like “Oh she’s pregnant.”
It was one of those things where my family, I thought everybody would be surprised.
Jonathan says neither his family nor his friends questioned his commitment to care for Kahlim.
We were friends. Once I found out she was pregnant, that’s when she told me about the father and the circumstances. I found out before we were in a romantic relationship.
I was more attracted to her because she was open with me like that. Sometimes people don’t say anything until after they start to show.
It was definitely meant to be.
How did you take responsibility over the situation? Did you feel you a had a responsibility?
At that point his father was not in jail yet. He was doing whatever he was doing. He had other kids. By the time we got together, they weren’t living together. There was no issue. He got his own apartment. I was paying bills. I was working extra jobs, so I got home at two, three in the morning. I knew he [Kahlim] was coming.
But it was fun, going to Lamaze class, going to all these different baby learning classes. My parents have been married for 60 years. The rest of my cousins, pops split, my uncles bounced on their kids so I got reference to all that. I was the only one who had two parents. So for me, it was more than the right thing to do, it didn’t come hard. I remember the day she asked, “Are you sure about this?” It was the day we were moving in because I wanted us to move in. I was like “Yeah. Your son,” because we knew it was going to be a boy at that time “is the same person I fell in love with too.”
For other people I know in that same situation, they came into it when the child was already born so it was a little different. For me, i think because the child wasn’t there I was able to take responsibility very early on, so it wasn’t an issue going through with it.
By the time he came, it only took us 19 minutes [to deliver Kahlim] and the doctor wasn’t even there. She was going through it and I asked her if she wanted drugs and she said no. And the doctor left to go get it anyway. I was pissed. So actually they were gone and she was like “I want to try to push.” So I did what I learned in class and grab her knees, grabbed her hands and she pushed and he started coming out. By the time the doctor came, I was like “Yeah, no drugs!”
It was easy after that. Once he was delivered, I was like phew! I feel once you go forward with something like taking care of a child, it kind of starts to come naturally: let me save money, get an extra job, do these things. At least in my position it did just because I’ve seen so many people in my family and my friends who did not have that. And I knew his [Kahlim’s] dad was eventually going to be arrested, just based on what his mom was telling me about his lifestyle. I definitely did not want my son to have a situation like that, twice. At that point I was already calling him my son.
He’s always had a relationship with his father. He goes see him in jail, stuff like that. Before he went to jail, he [Kahlim] would argue with his mom about his “real dad”.
He’d [Kahlim] be like “That’s my real dad, what are you talking about? That’s my biological dad.” He didn’t understand when he would say biological. I’d be like “No son, that’s actually, she’s right.”
The hard part was explaining to the little man, because for kids, they don’t want everyone to know their business. What he’s starting to understand now is that community is community, you gotta be proud of who you are, you got two dads. That was the hard part, trying to explain to his little mind when I say it’s all good. Most people don’t even know because we don’t say anything. We hear people say “Oh he looks so much like his dad.” He just laughs!
Where do you currently live? How is the environment where you reside for raising a child?
In North Oakland. So we have two separate households. My son stays in East Oakland and North Oakland. I would say, knowing where we’re at, it’s better, in North Oakland. In East Oakland, where his mom stays at it’s the same drama that we have, we still have shootings. Once me and his mom seperated, I moved him to where we live at now. I thought we were getting away from the drama, but we had a shooting the same month we first moved in.
Even though it’s violent there it is still safe. I don’t know if that makes sense. Things happen all over Oakland. Our street is safe.
The only thing that I don’t like is we don’t have a lot of little kids in our community, so he doesn’t play with the neighborhood kids. His mom’s neighborhood has kids, but then some neighborhood kids have situations that are hard for them, so some of the influences that they’ve had come out. When they play I’ll watch them.
Where we stay at, they try to make it seem like it’s not as bad as where his mom stays at. It’s kind of cosmetic. It’s the same in his mom’s neighborhood. His mom’s neighborhood is supposed to be a nice part of East Oakland, but it’s not. They have shootings right down the street all the time.
For him, he doesn’t like hearing the news because where we live at in Oakland, it’s portrayed as bad. And he’s growing up there, and he’s tired of hearing about it.
In terms of our house, that’s the safety net. When he comes in, he’s good.
Do you live alone?
No, my girl, she stays with me.
Jonathan casually asks Kahlim how long his dad’s partner has been living with him. They exchange numbers back and forth.
She’s been living there about three years.
Kahlim whispers a second later, “Don’t lie to the press.”
Jonathan repeats back laughing, “Don’t lie to the press!”
We’ve been together since he was about five going on six. I separated from his mom when he was four. I didn’t separate. Everybody says sometimes that moms go through this when they’re young. They go through a point where they just want to do their thing. She was like “I can’t do this family thing. I just want to be by myself.”
Did it surprise you?
Hell yeah! It surprised the hell out of me. I was kind of tripping. But then, at the same time it didn’t because her family and friends have always told me she likes being spontaneous and going on trips and things like that.
It was crazy. I understood it though. I wasn’t going to argue.
So when that happened I moved where we live now. I’ve always kept it to where at a certain degree it still feels like we live together. I try to make it where the only things he [Kahlim] has separate is the household. As far as family stuff we still do everything together. It pisses off my girlfriend, and it made her [Kahlim’s mom ]boyfriend mad, but that was the thing we both said. It was probably going to make the other people we were with mad, but regardless we were still gotta have a family structure for him.
It took me two years before I started dating anybody. I didn’t want people around my kid like that. And I met her. She was the site coordinator for all of our schools for the summer, for leadership excellence. I met her the same way that I met his mom.
For him [Kahlim], he likes it because he always says “She’s the part of my mom that I don’t get from my mom.” Like discipline and consciousness. That’s worked out for me.
It took a lot to have someone move in with us.
What challenges come up as a result of raising a child and being a graduate student? How do you find time to dedicate yourself to your studies?
Whoo! The biggest challenges are time management, self- care, staying motivated and focused. The reason why I say those is because they are the main ones. My son he gets mad at me because sometimes I tell him “Are you distracting me because I have to do my homework? Are you doing it on purpose?” The attention is taken away from your kid when your kid is used to having all the attention. He wants some attention at some point. It’s trying to manage that without transferring energy so I try not to transfer my stress to my kid. The stress that it puts on me, him, and his mom.
I drop him off at school every morning, but she has to pick him up. I gotta race from here to BART, walk from BART to the house, which is like ten blocks, and then drive all the way to East Oakland and get him back to the house.
Kahlim stays with Jonathan on weekdays and spends time with his mom during the weekends. Jonathan picks Kahlim from his mother’s place on the weekdays.
I make sure all the homework is done, and by that time it should be done because it’s 9:30 p.m. almost 10 o’clock. I’m used to him going to bed at 8 p.m. so it’s really messing up the structure. He likes it because he gets to stay up longer, but it’s made it to the point where he procrastinates on his homework. It’s affected my parenting in situations where me and him argue. We never used to argue like this. I only started my Master’s because he had started middle school and that’s a big transition. I might as well start on one in my life too, but it’s around education so that way we can both go through it. When we do get through it we’ll be like “Man that was hard, but at least now we know we can do it!”
It’s been rough in terms of managing his school stuff. All the emails I have to keep up with for school here, then I gotta keep up with his because all of his school stuff is online too.
Certain things that I used to do as a father have fallen on his mom in terms of the stuff his mom wouldn’t do.
When she couldn’t do stuff for the school I could step in and I could do all of that. But once I started getting more busy, especially this year, she had to do it. And that started causing issues.
Then she got pregnant last year. Her daughter is three months, almost four months.
That was a trip because she had the baby on my first semester of college.
There was a point where I was told that I was going to have pay tuition for a couple of months.
Kahlim attends a private school in Berkeley.
I got a scholarship. All the schools in Oakland we tried to get him into were bad. The only one we could get him into was in Berkeley. So when we got him in, they gave me a scholarship for $12 thousand, so I only had to pay $10 thousand. Only.
I knew I was about to start school and I knew that if I was going to start school, I wanted to make sure he had enough support to where if I’m at school, I’m not going to have a situation where I have to worry about the school he’s at.
She [Kahlim’s mother] was saying she was not going to be able to pay a couple of months, and it just so happened before she had the baby she had helped me with some months. It was only because i paid so many other bills for him. He’s a really good athlete and a really good artist and he’s in a lot of sports programs.
It’s ironic that a mother with two children was able to help me because I’m always helping her.
It’s a strange situation dealing with two different households, with two different parenting skills, two different consciousness. The male and the female thing don’t matter at all. It’s not even a gender issue, it’s just more around the parenting. It’s made it hard because it’s hard for me to check his homework as far as what he has to do. I’ll be tired by the time I get home. I’ll look online and he’s asleep and I’m like “He didn’t do that. Damn it.” Now in the morning me and him are getting into it like “Dude you need to do that.” He’s like “Dad it’s not due today, it’s due on Friday.” So I tell him “Well why don’t you get it done today so that you don’t have to worry about it tomorrow?” So that’s the strain that’s happened with college is that when you’re in college everyone is in college. Everybody is in college.
His mom is always like “You’re always saying you’re too busy, that you got this paper due.” It’s getting irritating because I have to read or I have to study or I have to write. Nobody is stopping the tasks. “Can you do this? Can you do that?” And if you can’t do it, he’s getting mad, she’s getting mad. It’s been stressful, but it has definitely been humbling. It’s definitely taught me how to transition into something I knew was going to happen. Hopefully next year it will be easier.
How do you manage financially? Do you have to make sacrifices?
If I didn’t qualify for financial aid, pshh, it would have been bad. If I don’t get financial aid next semester, it’s going to be hard. Loans, I know you have to pay them back, but if I wouldn’t have gotten the loans it would have been all bad. Just the $10 thousand it costs for me to go to school a year.
Everybody thought I was crazy because me not having any debt they tell me , “Why are you getting into debt now?”
“Because it’s worth it.”
Financial aid is helping. I actually pay for my girl’s tuition because she can’t get financial aid. It’s a quarter system.
So you pay for your girlfriend’s tuition, for Khalim’s tuition, and your tuition? How do you do it?
I’m an artist too. I got a salaried position. I work full time. I work over 40 hours a week. I also do art on the side as far as extra money. Whatever you can do to make it happen. The good part with his tuition, it’s $1,000 a moth. His mom pays $500. I only have to pay $500. For my girlfriend’s tuition, sometime she can pay $400 or $ 500. Not every time, but almost every time. It hasn’t been the full amount, but between all of that it’s $1,000 a month easy. I’m going to be honest, I haven’t figured out how I’m doing it.
If it weren’t for financial aid, we’d have to cut back a lot.
Everyone in the house is vegan or vegetarian, except for him [Kahlim]. Everyone eats healthy, but it’s expensive. He’ll be laughing, “Groceries in our house are hella expensive, dad!” We got to Berkeley Bowl and spend $60 for one bag, two bags.
But when you’re with kids, you have to watch out on how much you cut back because you got to cut back on the fun a little bit. It’s definitely a struggle.
Is being a dad what you expected it to be?
Yes! That’s the one thing I love about my son. He’s the classic little boy, but he’s special in so many different ways that I wasn’t. I get the shock value. There’s not a day that goes by where I’m not like “Damn! This is what they say being a dad was going to be like. This is what my dad told me being a dad was going to be like.” To the point where my dad gets mad at me when he sees me get upset at my son over stuff he didn’t get upset with me about.
But I remember getting screamed at by him.
It’s everything I expected: the shock, the joy, the stress, all of it.
The only thing I didn’t expect was that our family would be broken up like that. I didn’t see that one coming. After a year I was like “Well, at least I’m a dad.” He definitely met all of my expectations and exceeded them.
For instance, I expected my son to be very energetic. All my friends that had little boys, they were all over the place. These kids don’t sit down. He exceeded that expectation.
When I was a kid, all the little boys were rough emotionally. He doesn’t have that little boy meanness. He’s the opposite of that. He’s very warm and gentle. He blew me out the water with that one.
He’s got a real critical consciousness that I was like wow. I learn a lot about my son. That. I didn’t expect.
He’s like a fly on the wall where,
He pauses to tell Kahlim, “I don’t mean to call you a fly.” He doesn’t seem bothered. He’s too busy concentrating on the computer screen.
if his mom did something really jacked up, I would see myself not wanting to verbalize my anger because I don’t want to send him a bad message, but he’ll verbalize it.
I am able to bring the responsibility back to me so he doesn’t get a misogynistic construct of “mom is messing up”
He sees his other him in other people and I like that.
Kahlim chimes in, “What do you mean by other people?”
“You look at people like you’re not going to be disrespectful.”
“Oh okay. Cool then.”
That’s definitely taught me how to be patient with his mom. And vice versa, I’ve been able to show him through his own words, “Yo, you told me not to get mad at mom for that.”
How does it feel to guide someone when you yourself are still finding your own way through life?
Me and him just talked about this two days ago. I find myself apologizing a lot to my son because I’m still learning. He’s at that stage where I’m trying to teach him respect. Learning how to turn off what I’m working on and have to pay attention to what he’s working on, it’s hard.
I tell his mom “Whatever misbehavior he has is because of you or me or both.”
When they talk about the world and school and all the other influences, I’m not even listening. I understand it’s there, but that’s after. Everything he gets inside the house, it counts. Even though, he’s at school for eight hours, but all my mistakes, all my bullshit, and how I act, everything that comes with me, he’s going to experience that. That’s the hardest part of being a parent. How am I going to give him advice about something I haven’t fully conquered, or figured out, conquer is not the right word.
Everyone says “Oh, you’re so much this, you’re so much that now,” but it’s only because I’ve had to A: model behavior I don’t even have, and then B: figure out how to transfer my adult behavior to him in a way that he can model it. So that’s been hella hard. I mean nights of tears because of that.
There was an issue with his mom because I didn’t spank him.
I’m like “Why spank him?” I discipline, but I don’t spank him.
How do you discipline him?
Usually I wind up raising my voice and that usually works after the fifth time. I discipline him by talking to him. I take stuff away too, but I don’t take it away for extended periods. I take it away at the moment that an issue was presented. If he keeps his behavior right, he can get it back. I’m going to keep taking it away until you get it right. Other people just take it away and wait.
First I take away the material thing. Anything that’s technology, gone.
“And sports,” adds Kahlim.
His mother likes to do sports. I’m not a fan of that. That’s for him, he has to be active at certain parts of the day. She spanks him. She makes him do push-ups. I make him do push-ups. It’s more or less talking and working out the behavior because he likes to know Why. “What did I do? Why am I getting yelled at?”
A lot of people say their kids aren’t listening to them. He listens and he hears me, but he doesn’t follow instructions the way I tell him to follow them. That’s the thing he gets in trouble for the most. His teachers will say he blurts out the answers. At home, he’ll just talk smart.
“I don’t talk smart,” interrupts Kahlim.
Yes you do. He likes to talk back. He always has a response and it makes me reactionary sometimes. If I’m moving slow or if I don’t sound like it’s a sense of urgency, he’s going to lag. He’ll take that ten, fifteen extra minutes. Even if I say it with a sense of urgency, he’s still going to lag. When I was growing up, my mom would have whooped my ass, “I told you to get up!” He’s just one of those kids that likes to be at his own pace for everything and that is not how I was raised. I wasn’t prepared for that. He gets mad when I tell him “You’re doing what I tell you. You’re not doing what you want.”
On the flip side of that, I also give him a sense of ownership in the family. I think sometimes it looks different. People will be like “Man, why are you going to let him talk to you like that?” If my son is intelligent enough to point something out that I am doing or something that i’m saying that doesn’t match something I’ve taught him, then it’s fine for him to point that out. He’s not talking back, he’s actually helping me. The only thing is that he does it in public so people will think that’s rude. I don’t know, some things he gets in trouble for, I can’t say that they’re issues for me. They’re issues for everybody else, but that’s because they’re used to kids not having a voice. For him, he wants to do his own thing like dying his hair, “You want to dye your hair. Alright, go ahead.”
Kahlim’s hair reminds me of a copper sunset.
Other people are like, “Man, you gotta watch that, that’s not disciplining him.”
Some things I’m not disciplining because that’s his own body. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or bad thing, but I am trying to work on it.
He wants me to be on his side when he is mad at his mom. He wants me to disagree with his mom and I’m not always going to do that. There’s certain things I don’t agree with that she does and she knows it. I’m trying to make sure he respects his mother because they have issues among each other. I’m trying to make sure there’s respect there, not just for his mom, but in terms of the importance of women because that is something I have to teach him.
What values do you instill in him?
Oh man, definitely I instill a lot of sense of community. In our household, I try to make sure that who he is in his bloodstream is represented. He knows about his indigenous background. He knows about all of that. He’s at a point now where if somebody jokes and makes a Jamaican accent, he gets really upset. Some people get tripped out a little bit. My son, I try to teach him consciousness, but in a way that is authentic. I try to teach him to be authentic. He looks at Black folks and Latinos strange when they don’t know about their culture. He doesn’t like white folks with dreads. It’s a good thing that I instill these values, but I also teach him what it means to be human such as the universal aspects of African culture, all the different cultures he comes across: what the difference is between being Latin, what the difference is between being Latino, what the difference is between being Chicano. I tend to lean heavily on culture in my household, heavily, just because I don’t want my son growing up without that.
Hip-hop, is something that my son is well versed in, in terms of real hip-hop, not like the commercial hip-hop.
I’ve taught him to have a critical consciousness and perspective about hip-hop where even though he likes it, he know why it’s [commercial hip-hop] wack.
I’ve also taught him a unique sense of family because he’s had challenges I never had growing up.
The main thing I try to teach him is about male privilege. Where does male privilege even come from? He asks, “Why is she getting mad right now?” I tell him, “Because we’re asserting our male privilege like talking over her and not listening to her.”
You can’t expect to ask women about women because that is misogynistic. If you want to know, you should do your own studies.
It’s learning about things you had issues growing up but didn’t pay attention to.
The dope part about being in school is able to teach him all the concepts and everything I’m learning in ethnic studies.
What is your own personal relationship with your father?
I love my pops. We’ve always had a love relationship, but my pops didn’t start saying I love you to any of us in the family until my grandfather had passed in ‘96.
My dad wound up having a heart attack. I was a sophomore in high school. He died in front of me and my sister. He came down the hallway yelling. I was always with my dad. My dad was stressed out that day. He came down the hallway and had a heart attack right in front of us. He was gone and my mom pushed us right back into the room and closed the door because he was just out there. He stopped breathing and everything. My little sister was in her room praying.
Long story short, the ambulance came and they brought him back to life and then lost him again. By the time we got to the hospital the nurse said they had to revive him three times. We were in shock. My dad did a lot of things in his life that kept him healthy. He never smoked, didn’t drink, never did any drugs. It was just a schock. Then, my grandfather passed. I think that was what shook him up.
Those mortality moments always made me think about how close me and my dad are. We got closer and closer and now I can tell him I love you on the phone and I might get one back. Now that I might be able to get him to say I love you, that’s the shit. I’m like man, we’ve come a long way!
I was a little badass. My son is no way nearly as bad as I was. He’s not bad at all. His heart is in a different place which I’m thankful for.
My dad was the typical Afro-masculine dude, the provider. I didn’t take all of that.
I remember the first time my dad saw me cry, I was a kid and he said, “What the fuck you crying for? We don’t do that shit.” My dad never cried and neither did my older brother. The only time I saw them cry was when my grandfather passed.
His [Kahlim’s] mom always got mad at me for kissing [Kahlim] him, “Why you be kissing him like that, he’s not a baby.” She doesn’t get it, my dad didn’t do that. She would get mad because whenever he [Kahlim] was away from me, he would call me before bed and he didn’t call her. I had to coach him, “Call your mom, call your mom.” For me, I can’t be away from him for several hours.
She’ll have him on the weekends and I’ll have him during the week. I have him for all the school stuff. I definitely see to it that everything I didn’t get from my father, he gets. Everything I got from my father, I make sure I give him.
I think it makes my dad happy. I watch him smile when he sees both of us doing certain things.
What would you tell other fathers who are not active in their children’s’ lives?
Part of the reason why it was so easy to be my son’s father immediately is because I grew up around everybody in my life who didn’t have a daddy. I was the only kid with two parents. In the east coast, my family, some of the men stayed, but the majority of them left. When I came to California, it was even worse. All my friends out here, nobody had any dads. The effects it had on my cousins is they were murdered. They’re gone. My cousin is in Sacramento right now facing life in prison for a murder that he didn’t commit but he was in the car. That’s directly because his dad wasn’t involved. I’ve had to talk to a lot of people in my family and my friends. I mean violent conversations. We’ve had fights because of that. It’s a real issue for me to find someone creating lives and not taking responsibility. What I tell them is to imagine they were a child and not having a father. Think about all the shit that’s missing at that moment. It’s ten times harder for these kids now. It’ way harder. When we were little kids we used to have other men around that weren’t in prison yet, they weren’t dead yet, they were actually helping us.
I try to tell brothers, there’s three things you can be :a boy, a male, or a man.
Now, you can go and be a little boy, and be dependent on women, and live on their couches and when the girlfriend leaves you start acting a fool. That’s a little boy mentality.
Or you could be a male and just chase a whole bunch of women and try to have sex with them all.
Or you could be a man which is when you recognize you have both situations inside of but you check yourself and just raise your kid.
We have this conversation all the time in Oakland because so many young brothers there that ain’t around their fathers, and they have their own kids now. Even if your girl leaves, you still got to be a father.
His [Kahlim’s] sister that he just had, the dad lives on that street, three or four houses down and he denies the baby all the time. He made her take a blood test to see if it was his.
I also know a lot of brothers like me that take care of their kids and other people’s kids. It’s a lot of them. Things don’t work between you and the mom, but that don’t mean they don’t work between you and the child.
I think a lot of people are taking the cop out route because that statistic keeps being promoted: single moms, men don’t take care of their babies so a lot of people are like “Uh huh, they’re thinking that anyway.”
We live in a really sick time. I think that talking to a man about what it means to be a man versus a male or a boy, you’ll get through to them.
It’s really hard to get into a conversation with somebody that is not raising their kid. His dad is locked up and he still tells me thank you. I’ve never talked to him, but he tells him [Kahlim], “Tell him I said thank you.” Even the brother that can’t do it, understands why he should be.
When it comes to taking care of another life, I don’t think it should be that hard to figure out.
I tell my son that just because he has two dads and one mom, he’s not different. He thinks that’s tight because it means he has more family.
almendra 