Multiracial

Johannesburg, South Africa. -- Watching the negotiated struggle for democracy in this country is reminiscent of that old saw about how you don't want to see sausage being made if you ever intend to eat some. The final product might be fine, but taking a gander at what goes into it can make one a bit queasy.The latest product on the South African democracy shelves is the Transition Executive Council, or TEC for short. The idea is that since the government is essentially a discredited institution elected only by the small white minority, and since the ruling National Party is an active political player, there is no way to trust it to put on a fair election with everything from a state-run television to its police force to disperse and enforce its viewpoint.

THESE ARE TRYING times for South Africa. The country is experiencing racial unrest on a scale unprecedented since the advent of majority rule in 1994. Meanwhile, confessions by five white policemen that they brutally tortured and murdered black consciousness activist Steve Biko in 1977 have opened old wounds. And the white minority is increasingly restive because rampant crimes -- ranging from burglaries and rapes to car-jackings and murders -- have invaded their privileged neighborhoods.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Negotiators agreed yesterday on what will, in essence, be South Africa's first multi-racial government.They created a Transition Executive Council that when fully empowered, probably by October, will have non-whites making governmental decisions for the first time in South Africa's 350-year history.The groups represented in the TEC would essentially be the same groups represented in the current talks on South Africa's future -- two dozen parties, including President F. W. DeKlerk's National Party and Nelson Mandela's African National Congress.

No one said starting a new ministry would be easy.But for Don and Judy Bixler, United States directors for the Sakhisizwe Christian Ministries, pursuing their dream of ministering to black South Africans is a step of faith they are willing to take each day."This is definitely something God worked out," Judy said of the fledgling ministry, which includes a multi-racial church in Kwazakheletownship and a school in Port Elizabeth. "We never could have done this through our own effort."The couple, who returned in January 1991 from a year's work on the east cape of South Africa with Youth for Christ, embarked on this adventure in September when their former director contacted them about raising money for Sakhisizwe in the United States.

If newspaper headlines were the sole arbiter of what is important, then modern Ireland would be known primarily for two reasons: the "Troubles" in the North - the eternal feud between Irish nationalists and the local, pro-British Protestant majority - and the extraordinary growth over the past 10 years of its "Celtic Tiger" economy. But there is a third development, no less significant. Ireland in the 21st century is becoming multiracial and multicultural. Membership in the European Union (EU)

This is my 146th column for this newspaper. This unlikely marriage was arranged by then-Sun Editor Tim Franklin in the summer of 2008. I was stunned by the proposal, considering that for more than 20 years I had been publicly opposed to his newspaper's political agenda. I mocked what The Sun advocated and advocated what The Sun mocked. On Second Amendment issues, the differences were so stark that the newspaper once printed an editorial cartoon by KAL that showed me as a revolver spewing bullets out of its barrel.

The multiracial five-piece band Black Kids, which has an affinity for '80s British rock, is something of a sensation in Europe. There, the band has ascended the charts, packed venues and secured prime TV spots. And in the United States, the critical praise is deafening. Of course, the musicians didn't expect all the buzz. Music bloggers and hipster circles gush over the group's tongue-in-cheek multicultural image and the irreverent neon pop-rock of its debut CD, Partie Traumatic. The album has been out for about a month, and the scruffy band from Jacksonville, Fla., is already tired of hearing about itself.

Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown became the first candidate to join the 2014 Maryland governor's race Friday with a call to close the gap between rich and poor in education, health and economic opportunity. Before a crowd at Prince George's Community College that organizers estimated at 2,500, the Democrat outlined priorities that could have come straight out of the playbook of Gov. Martin O'Malley, Brown's term-limited partner in Annapolis. Brown is the first candidate, Democrat or Republican, to formally announce his candidacy, and he did so in uncompromisingly liberal terms - pledging to maintain Maryland's No. 1-ranked school system, to keep college tuition low and to invest aggressively in infrastructure and career training.

Dr. Benjamin Carson, a Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon, will travel to South Africa next month to join a team of doctors in the delicate separation of Siamese twins who are attached at the back of the head.The girls, who are 6 months old, appear to have separate brains and a shared major blood vessel.The operation will be further complicated because one girl's brain encroaches into the other's skull.Most likely, surgeons will have to split the shared vein and reconstruct the halves so that each child has an independent and fully functioning vessel.

Parents of multiracial children sometimes say they are colorblind. Since race doesn't matter to them, they figure it shouldn't for anyone else. But these parents - usually Caucasian - are doing their children a disservice by not preparing them for the prejudice and cruelty they'll sometimes face from peers and society, says Donna Jackson Nakazawa in her book Does Anybody Else Look Like Me? A Parent's Guide to Raising Multiracial Children. Nakazawa, a white woman married to a Japanese American, has two biracial children.