Washington — Rep. Mike Lawler, a New York Republican running for re-election, apologized for wearing blackface in a Michael Jackson costume when he was in college.
A photo of Lawler’s Halloween costume from 2006, when he was 20, was published by The New York Times on Thursday. Lawler wears a red leather jacket that resembles the one Jackson wears in his “Thriller” music video. Lawler’s face also darkened.
Lawler confirmed the photo’s authenticity in a statement to CBS News, saying the costume was meant to be “the sincerest form of flattery, a true tribute to one of my childhood idols since I was little and I was trying to walk on the moon in my mother’s kitchen.
“When I tried to imitate Michael’s legendary dance moves at a college Halloween party eighteen years ago, the gruesome blackface practice was the furthest thing from my mind,” he said. “Let me be clear, this is not it.”
“I’m a history student 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 face scrutiny over blackface, a racist art form dating to minstrel shows in the 1830s
in which white artists darkened their skin with cork and greasepaint and exaggerated their features, perpetuating stereotypes of black people.
Ralph Northam, the former Democratic governor of Virginia, faces calls to resign in a photo in a medical school yearbook that resurfaced in 2019 and showed one person wearing blackface and another in a Ku Klux Klan costume. Northam initially apologized for being one of the two people in the photo, then later said CBS News’ Gayle King that he “overreacted” and later realized he wasn’t in the photo.
