Elena Harap

Are my hands clean?

Are my hands clean?

Keeping infection at bay is a generous practice; hand-washing becomes an act of love

In spring 2020, when COVID-19 became a daily threat, I quoted to myself the fragment of a verse from Psalms, recalled from Sunday School days in Tennessee: “he that hath clean hands and a pure heart.”

I timed myself one day: From getting up in the morning and including trips to the bathroom at night, I washed my hands 21 times and used a hand sanitizer five times. I had clean hands and hoped I had a pure heart.

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The arc of marketing

Who was wearing these trendy clothes, cooking elegant meals, and going on carefree vacations? Not people of color, at least not in 2016.

My daughter-in-law, a savvy shopper, inadvertently exposed me to the racism of marketing in the year 2016. When I was living for several months in California, with my son's family, I would look idly at the catalogs that came almost daily in the mail until I began to pay...

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Celebrating Black History Month and a salute to the allies in the cause

For the past few years, I've been the only white member of the board of Paige Academy, an independent, African-centered school in Roxbury, Mass.; I am also among the founding members. It's an honor to be part of Paige's forty-year history. At the same time, I'm challenged as the...

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