Audrey Damare

Interviewee/ Narrator

Audrey Damare

Audrey Damare

Interviewer

Selena Piercy

Date

November 8, 2023

Location of the Interview

Sewanee, TN

Length

38 minutes, 48 seconds

Abstract

Audrey Damare was born in Raleigh, North Carolina and is currently a junior Spanish major at The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. The interview begins with Damare talking about her upbringing in a family that emphasized the importance of diversity and her experiences going to private schools in Raleigh. She has traveled all over the world with her father, a pilot, and has done two immersion programs in Costa Rica, so Damare has a lot of experience immersing herself in cultures that are different from her own.
At the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, Damare was part of a student-led organization at her private, Catholic high school called Justice and Equity for Students. This organization pushed for social change at her school, in terms of racial equity and providing financial support for students who could not pay full price for tuition, as those students were disproportionately Black people. She is now the vice president for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the Intersorority/Interfraternity Council at Sewanee and is heavily involved in DEI conversations happening on campus. Additionally, she believes that Black Lives Matter was successful in gaining major traction in a short period of time, but many supporters lost their energy and the movement declined. She also thinks white people should use their white privilege to give voices to Black people who were not allowed to have a voice to begin with. Damare hopes to see racial justice in the future in the form of government agency and holding oppressors accountable for racially motivated violence.