Trent Lott, still (as of this writing) the Republican leader of the U.S. Senate, went on Black Entertainment Network on Monday night to explain his egregious and indefensible remarks about race.

All of which is further indication that Lott should not be the leader of his party. In matters of race, Lott is possibly the most tone-deaf political leader of the last two decades.

Lott gave his mea culpa to interviewer Ed Gordon, and then a panel of black journalists and political analysts offered their reactions to the interview.

It is both ironic and symbolic that Lott chose BET. For starters, the network is no longer black-owned. In fact, it is nothing but all-entertainment. When Viacom, bought BET from Robert Johnson, the black entrepreneur and executive who owned the network, the first thing it did was suspend almost all of BET’s news and public affairs shows.

Some 40 black employees recently got their pink slips — just before Christmas. Longtime host Ed Gordon was among them.

Some have commented that black people losing ground is something Lott was all about even before his stupid and offensive remarks at Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party on Dec 5.

Even Thurmond, his mentor, has been more tolerable than Lott.

In his remarks at Thurmond’s birthday party, Lott reflected on his idol, the senior senator from South Carolina, who ran for president as a Dixiecrat in 1948. Thurmond then advocated states’ rights, Jim Crow and segregation.

In a moment of reflection and lament, Lott said that if Thurmond had won in 1948, America would not be facing “all these problems over all these years.”

A look at Lott’s voting record since he has been in Congress — you can find one in the current edition of Time — confirms what many have felt about Lott all along. He comes across not only as an inept speaker but also — depending on your perspective, ethnicity or party affiliation — as a bigot and a racist. He has raised issues that transcend personal politics or political party. Clearly, race is still a vexing problem in 21st-century America.

Not that there hasn’t been any progress on race since Thurmond ran for president. The Jim Crow laws have been ruled unconstitutional, and black people can vote. By including Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell in his administration, President Bush has appointed the two most powerful and influential blacks ever to be named to any president’s Cabinet.

Many black conservatives like to argue we can leave it all behind and that race doesn’t matter any more. But the fact that Lott has achieved such a leadership position, despite his record and attitude about race, suggests that they are wrong. Whether he should remain as majority leader is a matter that the 51 Republican senators must decide. I hope they don’t ask me. I don’t believe he is an aberration. And he should not be made a scapegoat behind whom others can hide.

When I travel the neighborhoods and urban areas of cities across this nation, I see that a lot of devastation remains — evidence of slavery (America’s Holocaust) and of de jure and de facto segregation.

Until we address that past openly and frontally as Americans, we can really never move forward and put the past behind us.

Just forcing Trent Lott to resign will not do that.