EXINGTON, Mass.
I don't know what's in Trent Lott's heart, although he's already talked far too much about it for my taste. But two things are clear. A lot of Americans, including most black Americans, will never believe his contrition. And Mr. Lott, by playing the supplicant while clinging to his post as Senate majority leader, has conceded Republican leadership on race-related issues to the Democrats and the traditional civil rights community.

In his interview Monday on Black Entertainment Television, Mr. Lott called the controversy a "wake-up call," talked of a bipartisan "task force of reconciliation," came out for "across the board" affirmative action and savaged his own lawmaking decisions with the bizarre claim that "my actions, I think, don't reflect my voting record." Read between the lines: he will now take his cues from the Democrats and their allies like the N.A.A.C.P. and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

Thus, the original tragedy — remarks that certainly sounded racist at Strom Thurmond's birthday bash — is compounded by his new posture as groveler-in-chief of the Republican Party. At a time when fighting racial inequality requires a willingness to challenge the mainstream civil rights establishment, Mr. Lott's party will no longer be able to stand tall.

On BET, Mr. Lott was defensive about receiving an F on the latest N.A.A.C.P. Congressional report card, saying that that "I have been changing." Yet this report grades politicians on such partisan, non-civil rights matters as their votes on extending unemployment benefits to aviation workers and increasing global AIDS financing. Not surprisingly, every Senate Republican received an F — even moderates like Lincoln Chafee and Olympia Snow. Mr. Lott can aim for a better mark, but he won't get one, not as a Republican.

The shame is that surrendering civil rights issues to the left would not be in the public interest or that of black Americans. Democrats and civil rights organizations are stuck staring into a rearview mirror. Of course, racism has not entirely disappeared, but the Democrats' attachment to yesterday's ideas — that inequalities can best be corrected through policies of racial preference — is a golden opportunity for Republicans to advance new ideas.

Take what is arguably today's most important civil rights issue: the racial gap in academic achievement. Robert Moses, a luminous figure in the civil rights movement of the 1960's, says that "the absence of math literacy . . . is an issue as urgent as the lack of registered black voters in Mississippi was in 1961." English literacy is equally important.

Yet the political left talks almost entirely of "re-segregated" and underfunded schools, and pushes for more busing and more spending, a strategy that has failed for decades. Democrats also believe in collective bargaining rules that allow dreadful teachers to retain their jobs. Their emphasis on "self-esteem" results in the dumbing-down of educational standards, what President Bush has rightly called "the soft bigotry of low expectations."

After an era of liberal leadership, the typical black or Hispanic student graduates from high school today with junior high skills, according to the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress.

If Mr. Lott cedes civil rights issues to the Democrats, how can Republicans in Congress join the majority of black parents who want vouchers so that their children can escape public schools that have become graveyards for hope?

For years, Republicans have run in terror from most controversial race-related issues. But it was not always so. More than 80 percent of Republicans in Congress voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Congressional Republicans can recapture the moral high ground — but not if their Senate leaders are unable to stand up to groups that are often at odds with the interests and even the views of their own minority constituents.

Abigail Thernstrom is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights.