In the week following the news from Monticello that archaeologists had unearthed Sally Hemings’ bedroom, the internet has exploded with one important reminder: Sally Hemings was not Thomas Jefferson’s mistress.

Hemings had six children by Jefferson. Yet she was not Thomas Jefferson’s mistress because she was his slave, and as his slave she was treated by him, and the entire system in which they lived, as property. Someone without legal status as a human, subject to constant violent coercion, cannot consent to sex. Enslaved women who bore white men’s children, and especially the children of their owners, were not “mistresses” or “lovers”: they were victims of rape.

It’s an important discussion not only for retaining a clear-eyed vision of the racist foundations of ...