I read recently that a lot of people counted as slaves looked very white, such as Jefferson's wife's half sister Sally Hemings. This got me thinking about the fact that a woman who looked somewhat white and her subsequent children with Jefferson who also looked white were slaves.

My first question is, because of how many children Jefferson had, does that mean that some white people with the last name Jefferson or Hemings are related to him?

My second question which is somewhat related. If so many extra people were counted as African slaves because of familial ties 3 to 4 generations back, does that mean a lot of poorer whites in the south are related to slaves in some way from that time. And also does this explain the insistence of purity among wealthier whites, since they consider these people as less than themselves even if they were free whites.

I find that a lot of the information I find on these subjects quite lacking and it feels like the whole picture of that time is presented as blacks under the thumb of the white man. However I see more of a division between class and the use of ancestry as an excuse to exert power over minority groups and the impoverished. I rarely hear about white people who can trace their lineage to slaves, but with the vast quantity of people included into the group for arbitrary reasons, it should be safe to assume that a lot more people who look white had an ancestor who was a slave.