You Don't Know Me

3

So where are we now with these evidences? Number three? This is easier than I thought.

A couple of months before he was shot a witness saw the dead boy having an argument with a black boy about my age and about my height wearing a black hoodie with white Chinese-style writing on the back. Actually there’s a bit of number five evidence there too. A black hoodie with Chinese writing on the back was found in my flat by the police.

You know what I’m going to say because you heard me say it to the prosecutor in this room. A black boy my height and age could be any one of the black boys in that area alone. How many twenty-two-year-old, five foot eleven black boys are there who are living in Camberwell right now? Hundreds? Thousands? More than thousands? It is a black area. What is it that most white people say? ‘I don’t even see colour.’ Ha! Well I tell you now, if you went down there tonight, you’d see a lot of colour on a lot of twenty-two-year-old, five foot eleven boys. Of course none of them would be as pretty as me, but you see what I am saying?

Then as well, how many black boys would there be who are from a different area but who are just visiting that area for one reason or another on a Saturday? So what I am saying is, is that a proper evidence or is it just one of them things? If that was the only evidence maybe I wouldn’t even be here. Maybe you would say to yourselves, this is just a piece of rubbish that ain’t worth nothing. And if you did say that I would agree with you. So can we throw that one away?

It’s the hoodie though innit? That’s what’s getting you. A black hoodie would be one thing but one with white Chinese writing on it – that’s too much of a coincidence, innit?

But is it though? If you look at it, you will see a label on that hoodie. When you go into your retiring room or whatever, take it out of the bag and have a look at the label on it. Do you want to know what it says? I will tell you what it says because I have had a look at it. It says ‘XXL’ and then in small writing it says this: ‘Made in Taiwan’. Now that might not seem to be a big deal but if you think about it, it could be a big deal – or a medium deal at least. I ain’t an expert or nothing but I am guessing that when the sweatshop that made this hoodie made this hoodie, they didn’t make just one. They made ten thousand maybe. ‘So what?’ you might say. But ain’t no Taiwanese people buying them hoodies. They’re made for here. You can tell that because the washing label, or whatever you call it, is in English.

So, ten thousand hoodies maybe. One for every one of them thousand twenty-two-year-old black males walking around that area on that day and nine thousand spare. And so what if one of these hoodies got found in my flat? If you went into the flats of all them people who bought one of these hoodies, do you know what you would find? You would find one of these hoodies. And you might find most of them or half of them or maybe even only a tenth of them would be black males my age. Why? Because it’s people my age who wear hoodies. He, Mr Prosecutor, don’t wear a hoodie on a Saturday night, I guarantee that. He’s wearing some tweed suit or whatever. It’s young people wearing them. People like me. So that’s a thousand people it could have been apart from me. And you only have to look at me. Do I look like I am XXL to you? And this is me after a year of going to the gym every day, a straight-up-and-down medium all day long. So what you like about this number three evidence then?