Art as a Mirror: The UN's Juneteenth Discussion on Culture and Hatred
On Juneteenth — a day that commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans and carries deep symbolic weight — the United Nations convened a discussion that cut to the heart of one of humanity's most enduring struggles. The question at the center of the conversation was both sobering and urgent: can the same cultural forces that inspire hatred also be harnessed to defeat it?
The answer, as artists and cultural advocates made clear through a series of striking examples, is yes — to both. Art and culture are not neutral. They never have been. From propaganda posters to protest songs, from colonial monuments to liberation murals, creative expression has always sat at the crossroads of power, memory, and moral reckoning.
Powerful Symbols That Speak Across Centuries
The UN discussion drew on a remarkable range of artifacts and artistic gestures to illustrate just how deeply culture is entangled with the history of hate — and with the possibility of healing. One of the most haunting images invoked was that of a gold collar worn by an enslaved African. An object of apparent material value, the collar is simultaneously a symbol of dehumanization, a reminder that enslaved people were regarded as property to be adorned and displayed rather than human beings deserving dignity and freedom.
This kind of artifact forces a reckoning. It does not allow viewers to look away or retreat into abstraction. That is precisely what powerful art does — it makes history visceral, immediate, and impossible to dismiss. When institutions collect, display, and contextualize such objects thoughtfully, they transform them from relics of oppression into instruments of education and empathy.
Equally moving was the reference to music preserved for nearly a century after the Holocaust. The deliberate act of saving, performing, and transmitting that music across generations is itself a form of resistance. It insists that the voices silenced by genocide were not erased. Culture, in this sense, becomes an act of bearing witness — a refusal to let hatred have the final word.
When Culture Becomes a Weapon: The Danger of Hate Media
Yet the discussion was equally frank about art and culture's darker potential. Among the most chilling examples raised was a staged reconstruction of a hate radio broadcast — a direct reference to the kind of media that has historically been used to dehumanize entire communities and incite mass violence. Radio broadcasts in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide are perhaps the most well-known modern example of how media can be weaponized to fuel atrocity, but the pattern reaches back much further and continues today in new digital forms.
By staging a reconstruction of such a broadcast, artists and educators do something paradoxical but necessary: they force audiences to confront how ordinary hate speech sounds, how persuasive and even entertaining it can be made to seem, and how easily it can normalize violence against a group of people. The goal is not to amplify hatred but to inoculate against it — to develop the critical awareness needed to recognize and resist it when it appears in new guises.
This approach raises important ethical questions that the artistic community continues to wrestle with. How do you represent hate without reproducing its harm? How do you educate without retraumatizing? These are not easy tensions to resolve, but engaging with them honestly is part of what makes this kind of cultural work so valuable.
Participatory Art and the Power of Collective Remembrance
Another image from the discussion that lingers in the imagination is the sight of porcelain coffee cups laid out in participatory remembrance. Simple, domestic, fragile — cups speak of everyday life interrupted. They evoke the ordinary rituals that hate crimes and genocides destroy. When communities are invited to participate in such an installation, placing cups or gathering around them, the act of remembrance becomes communal rather than passive.
Participatory art like this is particularly powerful in the context of countering hatred because it dissolves the boundary between observer and participant. People do not simply learn about historical trauma from a safe distance; they are invited into a shared space of acknowledgment. That shift from spectator to participant can be transformative, building the kind of empathy and solidarity that hatred depends on eroding.
Juneteenth as a Cultural Touchstone for Global Conversations
The choice to hold this discussion on Juneteenth was itself a meaningful act of cultural framing. Juneteenth marks the moment in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, finally received word of their emancipation — more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued. It is a holiday about delayed justice, about the gap between proclamation and reality, and about the enduring resilience of a community that survived centuries of systematic hatred.
Situating a global conversation about art and hate on this day sends a clear message: the fight against hatred is not a relic of the past. It is ongoing. And culture — in all its forms — remains one of the most powerful tools available to those who refuse to surrender to it.
Why This Conversation Matters Now
In an era when hate speech spreads at algorithmic speed and cultural symbols are routinely weaponized in political conflicts around the world, the themes raised in the UN's Juneteenth discussion could not be more relevant. Artists, educators, policymakers, and communities everywhere are grappling with the same fundamental questions: What stories do we tell? Whose histories do we preserve? And how do we ensure that the culture we create builds bridges rather than burns them?
The examples shared at the UN — the enslaved person's collar, the Holocaust music, the reconstructed hate broadcast, the porcelain cups — remind us that these are not abstract philosophical questions. They are answered every day in museums, classrooms, concert halls, community centers, and online platforms. Every curatorial decision, every artistic choice, every act of preservation or destruction is a statement about whose humanity we recognize and whose we are willing to deny.
Culture as Both Warning and Hope
What the UN discussion ultimately affirmed is that culture is never just entertainment or decoration. It is the medium through which societies negotiate their deepest values, process their most painful histories, and imagine their most hopeful futures. Art can be a megaphone for hatred or a lifeline for the hated. It can preserve the memory of atrocity or help recruit the next generation of perpetrators.
The artists and advocates who gathered at the United Nations on Juneteenth understand this dual nature with clarity and urgency. Their work is a reminder that choosing how to engage with culture — critically, responsibly, and compassionately — is not just an aesthetic decision. It is a moral one. And in a world where hatred continues to find new expression in new forms, that choice has never mattered more.