Was there really a white celebrity on stage at the Grammys saying to a black artist: “The way that you make me and my friends feel, the way you make my black friends feel, is empowering”?

We’ve all seen clips of Adele’s inspiring acceptance speech at the Grammys by now. I clicked on the link to watch, and the first thing I heard was Adele saying: “I can’t possibly accept this award … I’m very humbled and I’m very grateful … but my artist of my life is Beyoncé. And this album to me, the Lemonade album, is just so monumental.”

From Aretha to Beyoncé: the black artists snubbed by the Grammys Read more

By now my heavy-set bottom lip had fainted on the cement, my eyes were popping from their sockets, and my nostrils were flaring as wide as the Blackwall Tunnel. Adele had won, but had basically said she didn’t deserve it.

Queen Beyoncé’s reaction was so graceful: she was as shocked as we were. Then she blushed as she cried: tears equally laced with humility and pain. Because of the deranged voting process of the Grammys, she would not be joining the ranks of the mere 10 black artists who have won album of the year since the award was created in 1959. Only 10. And none in the last decade at all. Did you know that? If it hadn’t been for Adele’s speech, I wouldn’t have either.

I’ve since seen streams of tweets raging at Adele for “differentiating between races”, chirping “how dare she pity Beyoncé and offer her some kind of pathetic shout out”. I saw things differently.

I screamed, “YES, ADELE, YAAAS” – because what she did in that moment was rare: she thought the award should’ve gone to somebody else, and she told us the truth. She is rare in the creative arts industry; a further rarity is that she’s working class. Did this have something to do with the brave and, to some, outrageous choice she made that night?

All women are disadvantaged to varying degrees in our patriarchal society; and class, race, sexuality, disability and the number of those boxes you tick can make a staggering difference to your status in the creative industry. Having a disability, being trans or brown or female can often give you a distinct, culturally intriguing perspective on life – but it can also, ultimately, be a disadvantage (albeit a beautiful one). .

A report by the Ruderman Family Foundation found that “more than 95% of characters with disabilities are played by able-bodied actors on television”. The academics Irena Grugulis and Dimitrinka Stoyanova found that women and people from ethnic minorities were underrepresented in UK film and TV. So if we can conclude that not being a white male might make things a little harder, being at a “disadvantage” in multiple ways (a gay, trans, Asian woman from a working-class background with a disability, for instance) will make things harder than having the singular setback of being able-bodied but from a working-class background.

I thought about life on my estate. Yes, not everyone got on; yes, I was the victim of racist attacks as a child (and even still as an adult), but poverty was no respecter of race – there was an affinity between myself and the white girls in my school, on my estate, in Tower Hamlets. And the knowledge of that gave me a sweet sense of nostalgia at Adele’s speech.

Her experience of life as a working-class female gave her the ability to see that some black people felt things listening to Beyoncé’s music that white people could not. I bet Adele is probably used to being the one at a disadvantage in comparison with her female caucasian counterparts from wealthier backgrounds in the entertainment business. She’s used to knowing her lack of familiarity with the highbrow cultural norms that suffocate the creative industry makes her different in ways that means she may not always “win”.

I remembered being at drama school. We were doing an exercise where we were divided into two groups based on whether we answered yes or no to statements from a tutor. One of those statements was: “Your parents own a home.” I found myself on one side of the room alone, opposite a group of 22 whose parents did own a home.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Adele’s experience of life as a working-class female gave her the ability to see that some black people felt things listening to Beyoncé’s music that white people could not.’ Photograph: Frank Micelotta/REX/Shutterstock

I wondered whether it wasn’t race but class that made me feel like a complete outsider, even though I was the first black female the school had had in five years. I’d been the “only black girl” so many times, but it had never felt quite like this: I’d never been the only working-class one.

The differences between myself and my year, many of whom were friends, intrigued me, so I wrote and spoke about it. An emergency meeting was suddenly called. One day before lunch, I was given a tipoff by my gay, working-class mate that this covert operation had been in the making for a few days: “Beware, Michaela, this is an ambush: the sole subject of this meeting is you.”

My entire year gathered in a big circle – I sat in silence as they awkwardly revealed the intention behind it. It was explained to me that I’d caused offence by saying that I felt different because I was a working-class Londoner with immigrant parents. My female classmates bounced frantically between grief, panic and irritation: they didn’t see class, so why should I?

Why were my drama school girlfriends so comfortable and eager to discuss sexism and gender inequality but class and race were taboo? I think it was because the latter two didn’t affect them; they didn’t face these extra victimhoods so would rather have not thought about them; perhaps a fear of understanding that although they weren’t gifted with the golden penis, their parents’ golden wedding bands and their working limbs made them privileged in many, many other ways.

That’s why feminists sometimes argue across lines of race, gender, trans-identity, sexuality and finance. It’s why misogynoir was created, because for black women misogyny was, at best, half their problem. It’s why a great female comedian such as Amy Schumer is often seen giving many fucks about the perils of being female but zero when it comes to those poor and/or brown. It’s why we celebrate Equal Pay day to highlight the additional four months (in the US) it takes for a woman to make what a man makes in a year. But that’s for a white woman; for black women it’s an additional seven months.

Orange is the New Black season four review – criminally close to greatness Read more

And it’s why while black people celebrated the brilliantly complex portrayals of black women in Orange is the New Black, we blissfully avoided thinking about its unimaginative, poorly developed Asian characters. Accepting privilege is hard.

Of course there are exceptions. I have wonderful, empathetic white girlfriends from wealthy backgrounds who are no longer comfortable defending solely their own causes. One of the girls who secretly orchestrated that “emergency meeting” at drama school privately apologised two years later. But to bring about real change a private apology is never enough – in fact, it’s lame. The first expectation for a person of privilege should be that they speak especially to your equally privileged but ignorant friends.

Do you have an Amy Schumer in your life? Weed her out. Highlight your sensitivity and disappointment in her for partaking in the micro-aggressions and subtle forms of prejudice that are quietly poisoning the era of progress and equality in which we live. And those of us who are content creators have a duty to make room for those we know are less privileged than we are.

Adele did the best thing anyone of privilege can do: she admitted, she spoke. Because Adele is not an appropriating thief – she’s a queen, with a genuine desire for solidarity.