Washington — Rep. Mike Lawler, a New York Republican in a good race for reelection, apologized for carrying blackface as a part of a Michael Jackson costume when he was in faculty.
A photograph of Lawler’s Halloween costume from 2006, when he was 20, was printed by the New York Occasions on Thursday. Lawler is carrying a pink leather-based jacket that resembles the one Jackson wears in his “Thriller” music video. Lawler’s face has additionally been darkened.
Lawler confirmed the authenticity of the picture in an announcement to CBS Information, saying the costume was meant to be “the sincerest type of flattery, a real homage to one in all my childhood idols since I used to be slightly child attempting to moonwalk by way of my Mother’s kitchen.”
“When making an attempt to mimic Michael’s legendary dance strikes at a school Halloween social gathering eighteen years in the past, the ugly apply of black face was the furthest factor from my thoughts,” he mentioned. “Let me be clear, this isn’t that.”
“I’m a scholar of historical past and for anybody who takes offense to the picture, I’m sorry,” he added. “All you are able to do is reside and be taught, and I recognize everybody’s grace alongside the best way.”
Lawler isn’t the primary politician to come back below scrutiny over blackface, a racist artwork kind relationship again to the minstrel reveals within the 1830s
during which White performers darkened their pores and skin with cork and greasepaint and exaggerated their options, perpetuating stereotypes of Black individuals.
Ralph Northam, the previous Democratic governor of Virginia, confronted calls to resign over a photograph in a medical faculty yearbook that resurfaced in 2019 and confirmed an individual carrying blackface and one other in a Ku Klux Klan costume. Northam at first apologized for being one of many two individuals within the picture, then later advised CBS Information’ Gayle King that he had “overreacted” and realized later that he was not within the picture.
