I've decided to adopt Sen. Trent Lott as my newest Soul Brotha.

After his recent image-bending effort during a televised interview on BET (Black Entertainment Television) it seems clear to me that the incoming Senate majority leader has been born again. I'm happy to welcome Mr. Lott into the fold as honorary minority.

First, the junior senator from Mississippi apologized for the South's racist past.

Then he excused his abysmal voting record on racial issues by claiming ignorance: He didn't realize the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was such a great and important man. He didn't see how hateful and harmful enforced segregation was.

Sure, Mr. Lott voted against the King holiday, voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1990 and, in 1992, voted against extending the Voting Rights Act.

Sure, he's in trouble for saying at Sen. Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party recently that the country would've been better off had it voted in Mr. Thurmond's segregationist presidential ticket in 1948.

But now, Trent Lott sees the light. To hear him talk, Mr. Lott promises to be a mouthpiece for civil rights in the Senate.

Making amends

"I'm looking for this to be not only an opportunity for redemption but to do something about it," Mr. Lott told BET's Ed Gordon on Monday.

"It is about actions more than words," he said. "As majority leader, I can move an agenda that ... would be helpful to African-Americans and minorities of all kinds... but specifically aimed at showing African-Americans that they have particular concerns and needs that we have to advance, an agenda that will help rural and urban areas, education, so that every child really does have an education."

In case we still don't get it: "There's an opportunity here. This is a wake-up call.... This is an opportunity for me to do something about years of misbehavior."

So, Mr. Lott is going to be "our" man in Washington.

If anybody really believed him, he already would have talked himself out of the job he has.

Until recently, many conservatives were happy with Mr. Lott just the way he was, voting against affirmative action, pushing for judicial candidates with questionable women's and civil rights histories, singing praises for funding religious schools at the expense of public schools.

The Far Right viewed him as its poster boy. It doesn't want a new and improved Lott.

Just listen to Mr. Lott's new views on affirmative action:

"I am for affirmative action. And I practice it. I have had African-Americans on my staff and other minorities - but particularly African-Americans - since the mid-1970s.... I think you've got to have an aggressive effort in America to make everybody have a chance."

Mr. Lott said he'll set up a "bipartisan, bicameral, and multiracial ... taskforce on reconciliation.''

I didn't know he had it in him.

McConnell among also-rans

Neither did the Republican Party, which has quietly cultivated a few senatorial also-rans salivating over his leadership seat. The frontrunners: Sen. Don Nickles of Oklahoma, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee.

None has been a big proponent of affirmative action or school desegregation. These guys didn't run on platforms promising to be sensitive to minorities' needs. They don't feel obliged to make up for racist remarks. Are they likely to be any better than Mr. Lott?

Maybe it's safer with the devil we know, the contrite senator who is weighing his actions "differently and more carefully."

Maybe we should believe him. After all, he said it on BET.

E-mail damos@enquirer.com or phone 768-8395.