Slaves did not have the luxury that white people enjoyed, namely the universal belief that a person's life has value simply because they are human ; white oppressors did not view enslaved Africans as human and therefore did not place the inherent value placed on human life. The practices carried out aboard slave ships coincided with the belief that Africans were nothing more than cargo or livestock. Hine describes the practice of "tight" writing: "Most captains were 'tight packers' who squeezed human beings together in the hope that large numbers would offset the increase in deaths. She goes on in a later passage to state that “a third of trafficked Africans perished between their capture and their boarding a slave ship” (Hine, 2012). There is no clearer indication that white slaveholders believed that the lives of African slaves were worth nothing than the blatant disregard for slave mortality aboard ships. The captors attempted to keep the slaves alive simply in order to receive monetary reward. However, Hine's describes slavers as being exceptionally cruel to enslaved Africans on board ships despite the possible monetary consequences. Finally, Hine describes how the value placed on the life and health of an African slave was directly proportional to the amount of money that slave was worth, when he describes the experience of women aboard slave ships. Hine writes, “because women were less valuable property, crew members felt they had the right to sexually abuse them” (Hine, 2012). This passage describes how different African slaves faced different levels of cruelty and abuse depending on how much that person was supposedly worth. Not only were all enslaved black people considered less than human, but some people were also considered human beings.