Representative Mike Lawler of New York wore blackface as part of a Halloween costume when he was a college student almost two decades ago, according to photographs recently obtained by The New York Times.
The images, taken around October 2006, show a 20-year-old Mr. Lawler at a campus social gathering dressed as Michael Jackson. He is wearing a black shirt and a red jacket and, in one photo, is striking a signature Jackson dance pose. His face has also been visibly darkened.
Mr. Lawler, a rising Republican standout from the Hudson Valley, has frequently described himself as an ardent Jackson fan. But the photos are the first known instance of Mr. Lawler, who is white, dressing as the Black musician by wearing blackface, a practice that has long been considered racist.
The images may come into play in Mr. Lawler’s fight for re-election this fall against Mondaire Jones, a Black former congressman, in a suburban swing seat. The Republican is also eyeing a run for governor in 2026.
Mr. Lawler, 38, did not dispute the photos’ authenticity. In a statement, he said that the costume was intended to be “truly the sincerest form of flattery, a genuine homage to my musical hero since I was a little kid trying to moonwalk through my mom’s kitchen.”
“The ugly practice of blackface was the furthest thing from my mind,” he said. “Let me be clear, this is not that.”
“I am a student of history and for anyone who takes offense to the photo, I am sorry,” he said, adding: “All you can do is live and learn.”
The roots of blackface in the United States trace back to minstrel shows in the 1830s, when it quickly became a potent symbol of anti-Black racism. But the practice of white people darkening their faces — either using burned cork, shoe polish or makeup — has persisted for centuries onstage, onscreen and on college campuses.
In recent years, the governor of Virginia, the prime minister of Canada and other politicians and entertainers have been swept up in scandals involving blackface that helped fuel a reconsideration among white Americans. Some have continued to defend the practice; others have apologized.
The governor of Virginia at the time, Ralph Northam, nearly lost his job in 2019 after a page from his medical school yearbook surfaced that included a photo of men in Ku Klux Klan robes and blackface. Mr. Northam, a Democrat, denied he was in the photo, but disclosed that he used shoe polish to darken his face for a dance contest in Texas in the 1980s to compete as Jackson.
Mr. Lawler’s case took place in New York City nearly two decades after Mr. Northam’s, when he was a sophomore at Manhattan College, a small Catholic college in the Bronx where only 3 percent of students were Black. (The school is now known as Manhattan University.)
Mr. Lawler was named his class’s valedictorian in 2009. He was also well known on campus for his affinity for Jackson, one of the era’s leading cultural figures.
In 2005, as a high school senior, Mr. Lawler flew from New York to California to attend parts of Jackson’s criminal trial. The pop star had been charged with molesting a 13-year-old boy at his Neverland Ranch; the case ended in acquittal.
J. Randy Taraborrelli, a Jackson biographer, helped get Mr. Lawler into the courtroom and recalled in his book that the young fan had been “so disgusted” by testimony against Jackson “that he couldn’t help but mutter something derogatory under his breath.” Mr. Lawler was removed from the courtroom, according to Mr. Taraborrelli’s biography, “Michael Jackson: The Magic, the Madness, the Whole Story.”
The courtroom episode was reported last year by The Daily Beast in an article detailing Mr. Lawler’s fandom. The Republican has often invoked it during his political rise. As a campaign operative in 2014, he performed Jackson’s famed moonwalk in a documentary-style spoof.
The photographs of Mr. Lawler wearing blackface as Jackson had been posted on Facebook, and screenshots were shared with The Times last week. A reporter authenticated them with people who attended Manhattan College and who had remembered seeing them among unrelated party photos on Facebook at the time. They said the photos appeared to be have been taken inside one of the school’s dormitories.
In one of the images, Mr. Lawler is dressed in a jacket similar to the one Jackson wears in the “Thriller” music video. He is twisted into a dance move popularized by the star.
In another, he poses with two other students in unrelated costumes.
In both pictures, Mr. Lawler’s skin is visibly darkened. A person familiar with the costume, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, recalled that Mr. Lawler had used bronzer that he borrowed from female classmates. The congressman gave the same account.
The photos now threaten to complicate Mr. Lawler’s ascent. He burst onto the national stage in 2022 by defeating Sean Patrick Maloney, the chairman of House Democrats’ national campaign operation, in a left-leaning district.
Since then, Mr. Lawler has cultivated a reputation as a no-nonsense moderate, winning unusual attention for a first-term lawmaker by critiquing his party’s rightward drift in frequent cable news appearances and by courting groups that usually back Democrats. He has openly teased the possibility of challenging Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, in two years.
Historians who study blackface and racism in the United States said a costume like Mr. Lawler’s would have been relatively unsurprising at schools across the country in 2006, even though there was already growing sentiment that the practice was offensive no matter the context.
In 2010, students at the University of California, San Diego, started a national debate when they held a “Compton Cookout” to mock Black History Month with racist stereotypes. Five years later, Yale set off another debate after administrators urged students to avoid Halloween costumes that featured feathered headdresses, turbans or blackface.
Several historians drew a distinction between donning blackface in a costume or performance meant to menace or lampoon Black Americans, and portrayals like Mr. Lawler’s that appeared to be more closely connected to mimicry or fandom.
“This seems to be a tribute thing, however distasteful, which does mute it or soften it,” said Eric Lott, a cultural historian at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, who has written a book on blackface minstrelsy.
“Nevertheless, there is always, always an entitlement — a racist privilege that goes back to the ownership of human beings — behind the blackface mask,” continued Dr. Lott, who is white. “However much you care about, worship, carefully curate your love of Michael Jackson, to put on the mask like that is offensive.”
Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, a historian of race in 19th-century America at Smith College, agreed, saying “there’s a danger to it even when it might be a homage.”
“I’m not committing to vilifying the person,” said Dr. Pryor, who is biracial and the daughter of the comedian Richard Pryor. “But I don’t think you can say it didn’t mean anything.”
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