Washington – Rep. Mike Lawler, a New York Republican in a tight race for re-election, apologized for wearing blackface as part of a Michael Jackson costume when he was in college.
A photo of Lawler’s Halloween costume from 2006, when he was 20, was published Thursday by the New York Times. Lawler wears a red leather jacket similar to the one Jackson wears in his “Thriller” music video. Lawler’s face is also obscured.
Lawler confirmed the photo’s authenticity in a statement to CBS News, saying the costume was intended as “the sincerest form of flattery, a sincere tribute to one of my childhood idols since I was a little kid trying to get through my mother’s kitchen to moonwalk. .”
“When I tried to imitate Michael’s legendary dance moves at a college Halloween party 18 years ago, the ugly practice of blackface was the furthest thing from my mind,” he said. “Let me be clear: this is not that.”
“I study history and to anyone who is offended by the photo, I’m sorry,” he added. “All you can do is live and learn, and I appreciate everyone’s grace along the way.”
Lawler is not the first politician to come under scrutiny for blackface. a racist art form dates back to the minstrel shows of the 1830s
in which white performers darkened their skin with cork and grease paint and exaggerated their facial features, perpetuating stereotypes of black people.
Ralph Northam, the former Democratic governor of Virginia, faced calls to resign about a photo in a medical school yearbook that resurfaced in 2019 showing a person in blackface and another in a Ku Klux Klan costume. Northam initially apologized for being one of two people in the photo, but later spoke up Gayle King of CBS News that he had “overreacted” and later realized he was not in the photo.
