An intelligence quotient, or IQ, is a score derived from one of several different standardized tests designed to assess intelligence. When modern IQ tests are constructed, the median score is set to 100 and a standard deviation to 15. Today almost all IQ tests adhere to the assignment of 15 IQ points to each standard deviation, but this has not been the case historically. Approximately 95% of the population have scores within two standard deviations of the mean. If one SD is 15 points, then 95% of the population would be expected to have an IQ within a range of 70 to 130.

IQ scores have been shown to be associated with such factors as morbidity and mortality, parental social status, and, to a substantial degree, parental IQ. While the heritability of IQ has been investigated for nearly a century, controversy remains regarding the significance of heritability estimates, and the mechanisms of inheritance are still a matter of some debate.

IQ scores are used in many contexts: as predictors of educational achievement or special needs, by social scientists who study the distribution of IQ scores in populations and the relationships between IQ score and other variables, and as predictors of job performance and income.

The average IQ scores for many populations have been rising at an average rate of three points per decade since the early 20th century, a phenomenon called the Flynn effect. It is disputed whether these changes in scores reflect real changes in intellectual abilities.

History

Early history

The first large scale mental test may have been the imperial examination system in China. Modern mental testing began in France in the nineteenth century. It contributed to separating mental retardation from mental illness and reducing the neglect, torture, and ridicule heaped on both groups.

Englishman Francis Galton coined the terms psychometrics and eugenics, and developed a method for measuring intelligence based on nonverbal sensory-motor tests. It was initially popular but was abandoned after the discovery that it had no relationship to outcomes such as college grades.

French psychologist Alfred Binet, together with psychologists Victor Henri and Théodore Simon published the Binet-Simon test in 1905 which focused on verbal abilities. It was intended to identify mental retardation in school children. The score on the Binet-Simon scale would reveal the child's mental age. For example, a 6 year-old child who passed all the tasks usually passed by 6 year-olds—but nothing beyond—would have a mental age that exactly matched his chronological age, 6.0. (Fancher, 1985). In Binet's view there were limitations with the scale and he stressed what he saw as the remarkable diversity of intelligence and the subsequent need to study it using qualitative, as opposed to quantitative, measures (White, 2000). American psychologist Henry H. Goddard published a translation of it in 1910. The eugenics movement in the USA seized on it as a means to give them credibility in diagnosing mental retardation. American psychologist Lewis Terman at Stanford University revised the Binet-Simon scale which resulted in the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales (1916). It became the most popular test in the United States for decades.

The general intelligence factor (''g'')

The psychologist Charles Spearman made the first formal factor analysis of correlations between the tests in the early 20th century. In 1904, Spearman found that a single common factor could explain the positive correlations across intelligence tests. Using this result, he formulated what some consider to be the first theory of intelligence. His statistical model of intelligence came to be known as the general intelligence theory. It argued that intelligence is largely a single global ability. For three quarters of a century, Spearman's ''g'' theory was the dominant theory of intelligence.

In any collection of IQ tests, by definition the test that best measures ''g'' is the one that has the highest correlations with all the others. Most of these g-loaded tests typically involve some form of abstract reasoning. Spearman and others have regarded ''g'' as perhaps genetically determined and the true essence of intelligence. Some psychometricians regard g as a statistical artifact. The best accepted measure of ''g'' is Raven's Progressive Matrices which is a test of visual reasoning.

The War Years

During World War I a way was needed to evaluate and assign recruits. This led to the rapid development of several mental tests. The testing generated controversy and much public debate. Nonverbal or "performance" tests were developed for those who could not speak English or were suspected of malingering. After the war, positive publicity on army psychological testing helped to make psychology a respected field. Subsequently there was an increase in jobs and funding in psychology. Group intelligence tests were developed and became widely used in schools and industry.

L.L. Thurstone argued for a model of intelligence that included seven unrelated factors (verbal comprehension, word fluency, number facility, spatial visualization, associative memory, perceptual speed, reasoning, and induction). While not widely used, it influenced later theories.

David Wechsler produced the first version of his test in 1939. It gradually became more popular and overtook the Binet in the 1960s. It has been revised several times, as is common for IQ tests in order to incorporate new research. One explanation is that psychologists and educators wanted more information than the single score from the Binet. Wechsler's 10+ subtests provided this. Another is that the Binet focused on verbal abilities while the Wechsler also included non-verbal abilities. The Binet has also been revised several times and is now similar to the Wechsler in several aspects and but the Wechsler continues to be the most popular test in the United States.

Cattell-Horn-Carroll theory

Raymond Cattell (1941) proposed two types of cognitive abilities in a revision of Spearman's concept of general intelligence. Fluid intelligence (Gf) was hypothesized as the ability to solve novel problems by using reasoning and crystallized intelligence (Gc) was hypothesized as a knowledge-based ability that was very dependent on education and experience. In addition, fluid intelligence was hypothesized to decline with age while crystallized intelligence was largely resistant. The theory was almost forgotten but revived by his student John L. Horn (1966) who later argued that Gf and Gc were only two among several factors and he eventually identified 9 or 10 broad abilities. The theory continued to be called Gf-Gc theory.

John B. Carroll (1993) after a comprehensive re-analysis of earlier data proposed the Three Stratum Theory, which is a hierarchical model with three levels. At the bottom is the first stratum which consists of narrow abilities that are highly specialized (e.g., induction, spelling ability). The second stratum consists of broad abilities. Carroll identified eight second-stratum abilities. Carroll accepted Spearman's concept of general intelligence, for the most part, as a representation of the uppermost third stratum.

More recently (1999), a merging of the Gf-Gc theory of Cattell and Horn with Carroll's Three-Stratum theory has led to the Cattell-Horn-Carroll theory. It has greatly influenced many of the current IQ tests.

Many of the broad, recent IQ tests have been greatly influenced by the Cattell-Horn-Carroll theory. It is argued to reflect much of what is known about intelligence from research. A hierarchy of factors is used. ''g'' is at the top. Under it there are 10 broad abilities that in turn are subdivided into 70 narrow abilities. The broad abilities are:

Fluid Intelligence (Gf): includes the broad ability to reason, form concepts, and solve problems using unfamiliar information or novel procedures.

Crystallized Intelligence (Gc): includes the breadth and depth of a person's acquired knowledge, the ability to communicate one's knowledge, and the ability to reason using previously learned experiences or procedures.

Quantitative Reasoning (Gq): the ability to comprehend quantitative concepts and relationships and to manipulate numerical symbols.

Reading & Writing Ability (Grw): includes basic reading and writing skills.

Short-Term Memory (Gsm): is the ability to apprehend and hold information in immediate awareness and then use it within a few seconds.

Long-Term Storage and Retrieval (Glr): is the ability to store information and fluently retrieve it later in the process of thinking.

Visual Processing (Gv): is the ability to perceive, analyze, synthesize, and think with visual patterns, including the ability to store and recall visual representations.

Auditory Processing (Ga): is the ability to analyze, synthesize, and discriminate auditory stimuli, including the ability to process and discriminate speech sounds that may be presented under distorted conditions.

Processing Speed (Gs): is the ability to perform automatic cognitive tasks, particularly when measured under pressure to maintain focused attention.

Decision/Reaction Time/Speed (Gt): reflect the immediacy with which an individual can react to stimuli or a task (typically measured in seconds or fractions of seconds; not to be confused with Gs, which typically is measured in intervals of 2–3 minutes). See Mental chronometry.

Modern tests do not necessarily measure of all of these broad abilities. For example, Gq and Grw may be seen as measures of school achievement and not IQ. Gt may be difficult to measure without special equipment.

''g'' was earlier often subdivided into only Gf and Gc which were thought to correspond to the Nonverbal or Performance subtests and Verbal subtests in earlier versions of the popular Wechsler IQ test. More recent research has shown the situation to be more complex.

Modern comprehensive IQ tests no longer give a single score. Although they still give an overall score, they now also give scores for many of these more restricted abilities, identifying particular strengths and weaknesses of an individual.

Modern theories

J.P. Guilford's Structure of Intellect (1967) model used three dimensions which when combined yielded a total of 120 types of intelligence. It was popular in the 1970s and early 1980s but faded due to both practical problems and theoretical criticisms.

Alexander Luria's earlier work on neuropsychological processes lead to the PASS theory (1997). It argued that only looking at one general factor was inadequate for researchers and clinicians who worked with learning disabilities, attention disorders, mental retardation, and interventions for such disabilities. The PASS model covers four kinds of processes. The (P)lanning processes involve decision making, problem solving, and performing activities and requires goal setting and self-monitoring. The (A)ttention/arousal process involves selectively attending to a particular stimulus, ignoring distractions, and maintaining vigilance. (S)imultaneous processing involves the integration of stimuli into a group and requires the observation of relationships. (S)uccessive processing involves the integration of stimuli into serial order. The planning and attention/arousal components comes from structures located in the frontal lobe, and the simultaneous and successive processes come from structures located in the posterior region of the cortex. It has influenced some recent IQ tests and been seen as a complement to the Cattell-Horn-Carroll theory described above.

Well-known modern IQ tests include Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Stanford-Binet, Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities, Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children, and Raven's Progressive Matrices.

Approximately 95% of the population have scores within two standard deviations (SD) of the mean. If one SD is 15 points, as is common in almost all modern tests, then 95% of the population are within a range of 70 to 130. Alternatively, two-thirds of the population have IQ scores within one SD of the mean, i.e. within the range 85-115.

IQ scales are ordinally scaled. While one standard deviation is 15 points, and two SDs are 30 points, and so on, this does not imply that cognitive ability is linearly related to IQ, such that IQ 50 means half the cognitive ability of IQ 100. In particular, IQ points are not percentage points.

The correlation between IQ test results and achievement test results is about 0.7.

Mental age vs. modern method

German psychologist William Stern proposed a method of scoring children's intelligence tests in 1902. He calculated what he called a ''Intelligenz-Quotient'' score, or IQ, as the quotient of the ''mental age'' (the age group which scored such a result on average) of the test-taker and the ''chronological age'' of the test-taker, multiplied by 100. Terman used this system for the first version of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales. This method has several problems such as not working for adults.

Wechsler introduced a different procedure for his test that is now used by almost all IQ tests. When an IQ test is constructed, a standardization sample representative of the general population takes the test. The median result is defined to be equivalent to 100 IQ points. In almost all modern tests, a standard deviation of the results is defined to equivalent to 15 IQ points. When a subject takes an IQ test, the result is ranked compared to the results of normalization sample and the subject is given an IQ score equal to those with the same test result in the normalization sample.

The values of 100 and 15 were chosen in order to get somewhat similar scores as in the older type of test. Likely as a part of the rivalry between the Binet and the Wechsler, the Binet until 2003 chose to have 16 for one SD, causing considerable confusion. Today almost all tests use 15 for one SD. Modern scores are sometimes referred to as "deviation IQs," while older method age-specific scores are referred to as "ratio IQs."

Reliability and validity

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Psychometricians generally regard IQ tests as having high statistical reliability. A high reliability implies that while test-takers can have varying scores on differing occasions when taking the same test and can vary in scores on different IQ tests taken at the same age, the scores generally agree. A test-taker's score on any one IQ test is surrounded by an error band that shows, to a specified degree of confidence, what the test-taker's true score is likely to be. For modern tests, the standard error of measurement is about 3 points, or in other words, the odds are about 2 out of 3 that a persons true IQ is in range from 3 points above to 3 points below the test IQ. Another description is that there is a 95% chance that the true IQ is in range from 4-5 points above to 4-5 points below the test IQ, depending on the test in question. Clinical psychologists generally regard them as having sufficient statistical validity for many clinical purposes.

Flynn effect

Since the early 20th century, raw scores on IQ tests have increased in most parts of the world. When a new version of an IQ test is normed, the standard scoring is set so that performance at the population median results in a score of IQ 100. The phenomenon of rising raw score performance means that if test-takers are scored by a constant standard scoring rule, IQ test scores have been rising at an average rate of around three IQ points per decade. This phenomenon was named the Flynn effect in the book ''The Bell Curve'' after James R. Flynn, the author who did the most to bring this phenomenon to the attention of psychologists.

Researchers have been exploring the issue of whether the Flynn effect is equally strong on performance of all kinds of IQ test items, whether the effect may have ended in some developed nations, whether or not there are social subgroup differences in the effect, and what possible causes of the effect might be. Flynn's observation has prompted much new research in psychology and "demolish some long-cherished beliefs, and raise a number of other interesting issues along the way."

IQ and age

IQ can change to some degree over the course of childhood. However, in one longitudinal study, the mean IQ scores of tests at ages 17 and 18 were correlated at r=.86 with the mean scores of tests at ages 5, 6 and 7 and at r=.96 with the mean scores of tests at ages 11, 12 and 13.

IQ scores for children are relative to children of a similar age. That is, a child of a certain age does not do as well on the tests as an older child or an adult with the same IQ. But relative to persons of a similar age, or other adults in the case of adults, they do equally well if the IQ scores are the same.

For decades, it has been reported in practitioners' handbooks and textbooks on IQ testing that IQ declines with age after the beginning of adulthood. However, later researchers pointed out that this phenomenon is related to the Flynn effect and is in part a cohort effect rather than a true aging effect.

There have been a variety of studies of IQ and aging since the norming of the first Wechsler Intelligence Scale drew attention to IQ differences in different age groups of adults. Current consensus is that fluid intelligence generally declines with age after early adulthood, while crystallized intelligence remains intact. Both cohort effects (the birth year of the test-takers) and practice effects (test-takers taking the same form of IQ test more than once) must be controlled for to gain accurate data. It is unclear whether any lifestyle intervention can preserve fluid intelligence into older ages.

The peak of capacity for both fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence occurs at age 26. This is followed by a slow decline.

Genetics and environment

Environmental and genetic factors play a role in determining IQ. Their relative importance have been the subject of much research and debate.

Heritability

Heritability is defined as the proportion of variance in a trait which is attributable to genotype within a defined population in a specific environment. There are a number of points to consider when interpreting heritability. Heritability measures the proportion of ''variation'' in a trait that can be attributed to genes, and not the proportion of a trait caused by genes. The value of heritability can change if the impact of environment (or of genes) in the population is substantially altered. A high heritability of a trait does not mean that environmental effects such as learning are not involved. Since heritability increases during childhood and adolescence, one should be cautious drawing conclusions regarding the role of genetics and environment from studies where the participants are not followed until they are adults.

Studies have found the heritability of IQ in twins to be between 0.7 and 0.8 in adults and 0.45 in childhood in the Western world. It may seem reasonable to expect that genetic influences on traits like IQ should become less important as one gains experiences with age. However, the opposite occurs. Heritability measures in infancy are as low as 0.2, around 0.4 in middle childhood, and as high as 0.8 in adulthood. One proposed explanation is that people with different genes tend to seek out different environments that reinforce the effects of those genes. There is an ongoing debate about whether these heritability estimates are too high due to not adequately considering various factors, such as that the environment may be relatively more important in families with low socio-economic status or the effect of the maternal (fetal) environment.

Shared family environment

There are aspects of environments that family members have in common (for example, characteristics of the home). This shared family environment accounts for 0.25–0.35 of the variation in IQ in childhood. By late adolescence it is quite low (zero in some studies). There is a similar effect for several other psychological traits. These studies have not looked at the effects of extreme environments such as in abusive families.

Non-shared family environment and environment outside the family

Although parents treat their children differently, such differential treatment explains only a small amount of non-shared environmental influence. One suggestion is that children react differently to the same environment due to different genes. More likely influences may be the impact of peers and other experiences outside the family.

Individual genes

A number of individual genes have been reported to be associated with IQ. Examples include CHRM2, microcephalin, and ASPM. However, Deary and colleagues (2009) argued that there are still almost no replicated evidence. About 20,000 genes are thought to have an impact on the development and functionality of the brain.

Gene-environment interaction

Dickens and Flynn (2001) argued that the "heritability" figure includes both a direct effect of the genotype on IQ and also indirect effects where the genotype changes the environment, in turn affecting IQ. That is, those with a higher IQ tend to seek out stimulating environments that further increase IQ. The direct effect can initially have been very small but feedback loops can create large differences in IQ. In their model an environmental stimulus can have a very large effect on IQ, even in adults, but this effect also decays over time unless the stimulus continues (the model could be adapted to include possible factors, like nutrition in early childhood, that may cause permanent effects). The Flynn effect can be explained by a generally more stimulating environment for all people. The authors suggest that programs aiming to increase IQ would be most likely to produce long-term IQ gains if they taught children how to replicate outside the program the kinds of cognitively demanding experiences that produce IQ gains while they are in the program and motivate them to persist in that replication long after they have left the program.

Interventions

Interventions such as the Head Start Program have not produced lasting gains in IQ scores, although the more intensive Abecedarian Project have. In general, many interventions, as those described below, have shown short-term effects on IQ, but long-term follow-up is often missing.

A placebo controlled double-blind experiment found that vegetarians who took 5 grams of creatine per day for six weeks showed a significant improvement on two separate tests of fluid intelligence, Raven's Progressive Matrices, and the backward digit span test from the WAIS. The treatment group was able to repeat longer sequences of numbers from memory and had higher overall IQ scores than the control group. The researchers concluded that "supplementation with creatine significantly increased intelligence compared with placebo." A subsequent study found that creatine supplements improved cognitive ability in the elderly. A study on young adults (0.03 g/kg/day for six weeks, e.g., 2 g/day for 150-pound individual) failed, however, to find any improvements.

Musical training in childhood has also been found to correlate with higher than average IQ.

Recent studies have shown that training in using one's working memory may increase IQ. A study on young adults published in April 2008 by a team from the Universities of Michigan and Bern supports the possibility of the transfer of fluid intelligence from specifically designed working memory training. Further research will be needed to determine nature, extent and duration of the proposed transfer. Among other questions, it remains to be seen whether the results extend to other kinds of fluid intelligence tests than the matrix test used in the study, and if so, whether, after training, fluid intelligence measures retain their correlation with educational and occupational achievement or if the value of fluid intelligence for predicting performance on other tasks changes. It is also unclear whether the training is durable of extended periods of time.

IQ and brain anatomy

Several neurophysiological factors have been correlated with intelligence in humans, including the ratio of brain weight to body weight and the size, shape and activity level of different parts of the brain. Specific features that may affect Intelligence Quotient (IQ) include the size and shape of the frontal lobes, the amount of blood and chemical activity in the frontal lobes, the total amount of gray matter in the brain, the overall thickness of the cortex and the glucose metabolic rate.

Health and IQ

Health is important in understanding differences in IQ test scores and other measures of cognitive ability. Several factors can lead to significant cognitive impairment, particularly if they occur during pregnancy and childhood when the brain is growing and the blood-brain barrier is less effective. Such impairment may sometimes be permanent, sometimes be partially or wholly compensated for by later growth.

Developed nations have implemented several health policies regarding nutrients and toxins known to influence cognitive function. These include laws requiring fortification of certain food products and laws establishing safe levels of pollutants (e.g. lead, mercury, and organochlorides). Improvements in nutrition, and in public policy in general, have been implicated in worldwide IQ increases.

Cognitive epidemiology is a field of research that examines the associations between intelligence test scores and health. Researchers in the field argue that intelligence measured at an early age is an important predictor of later health and mortality differences.

Social outcomes

Outside of academic research and medicine, IQ testing is often done due to its ability to predict future job performance, social pathologies, or academic achievement. Academic research has also examined these associations, as well as the effect of IQ on other social outcomes, such as income and wealth.

Many of the arguments and criticisms assume that explained variance can be calculated as the square of the correlation coefficient. This way of calculating explained variance has been criticized as inappropriate for most social scientific work. Also, as for the heritability figure, the explained variance only refers to the proportion of ''variation'' in an outcome that is explained by a factor, and not the proportion of an outcome that is explained by a factor.

Other tests

One study found a correlation of 0.82 between ''g'' (general intelligence factor) and SAT scores; another has found correlation of 0.81 between ''g'' and GCSE scores.

Correlations between IQ scores (general cognitive ability) and achievement test scores are reported to be 0.81 by Deary and colleagues, with the explained variance ranging "from 58.6% in Mathematics and 48% in English to 18.1% in Art and Design".

School performance

The American Psychological Association's report "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns" states that wherever it has been studied, children with high scores on tests of intelligence tend to learn more of what is taught in school than their lower-scoring peers. The correlation between IQ scores and grades is about .50. This means that the explained variance is 25%. Achieving good grades depends on many factors other than IQ, such as "persistence, interest in school, and willingness to study" (p. 81).

It has been found that the IQ correlation with school performance depends on the IQ measurement used. For undergraduate students, the Verbal IQ as measured by WAIS-R has been found to correlate significantly (0.53) with the GPA of the last 60 hours. In contrast, Performance IQ correlation with the same GPA was only 0.22 in the same study.

Job performance

According to Frank Schmidt and John Hunter, "for hiring employees without previous experience in the job the most valid predictor of future performance is general mental ability." The validity of IQ as a predictor of job performance is above zero for all work studied to date, but varies with the type of job and across different studies, ranging from 0.2 to 0.6. The correlations were higher when the unreliability of measurement methods were controlled for. While IQ is more strongly correlated with reasoning and less so with motor function, IQ-test scores predict performance ratings in all occupations. That said, for highly qualified activities (research, management) low IQ scores are more likely to be a barrier to adequate performance, whereas for minimally-skilled activities, athletic strength (manual strength, speed, stamina, and coordination) are more likely to influence performance. It is largely mediated through the quicker acquisition of job-relevant knowledge that IQ predicts job performance.

In establishing a causal direction to the link between IQ and work performance, longitudinal studies by Watkins and others suggest that IQ exerts a causal influence on future academic achievement, whereas academic achievement does not substantially influence future IQ scores. Treena Eileen Rohde and Lee Anne Thompson write that general cognitive ability but not specific ability scores predict academic achievement, with the exception that processing speed and spatial ability predict performance on the SAT math beyond the effect of general cognitive ability.

The US military has minimum enlistment standards at about the IQ 85 level. There have been two experiments with lowering this to 80 but in both cases these men could not master soldiering well enough to justify their costs

The American Psychological Association's report "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns" states that since the explained variance is 29%, other individual characteristics such as interpersonal skills, aspects of personality etc. are probably of equal or greater importance, but at this point there are no equally reliable instruments to measure them.

Income

Some researchers claim that "in economic terms it appears that the IQ score measures something with decreasing marginal value. It is important to have enough of it, but having lots and lots does not buy you that much."

Other studies show that ability and performance for jobs are linearly related, such that at all IQ levels, an increase in IQ translates into a concomitant increase in performance. Charles Murray, coauthor of ''The Bell Curve,'' found that IQ has a substantial effect on income independently of family background.

Taking the above two principles together, very high IQ produces very high job performance, but no greater income than slightly high IQ. Studies also show that high IQ is related to higher net worth.

The American Psychological Association's 1995 report ''Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns'' stated that IQ scores accounted for (explained variance) about quarter of the social status variance and one-sixth of the income variance. Statistical controls for parental SES eliminate about a quarter of this predictive power. Psychometric intelligence appears as only one of a great many factors that influence social outcomes.

Some studies claim that IQ only accounts for (explained variance) a sixth of the variation in income because many studies are based on young adults (many of whom have not yet completed their education). On pg 568 of ''The g Factor'', Arthur Jensen claims that although the correlation between IQ and income averages a moderate 0.4 (one sixth or 16% of the variance), the relationship increases with age, and peaks at middle age when people have reached their maximum career potential. In the book, ''A Question of Intelligence'', Daniel Seligman cites an IQ income correlation of 0.5 (25% of the variance).

A 2002 study further examined the impact of non-IQ factors on income and concluded that an individual's location, inherited wealth, race, and schooling are more important as factors in determining income than IQ.

IQ and crime

The American Psychological Association's 1995 report ''Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns'' stated that the correlation between IQ and crime was -0.2. It was -0.19 between IQ scores and number of juvenile offenses in a large Danish sample; with social class controlled, the correlation dropped to -0.17. A correlation of 0.20 means that the explained variance is less than 4%. It is important to realize that the causal links between psychometric ability and social outcomes may be indirect. Children with poor scholastic performance may feel alienated. Consequently, they may be more likely to engage in delinquent behavior, compared to other children who do well.

In his book ''The g Factor'' (1998), Arthur Jensen cited data which showed that, regardless of race, people with IQs between 70 and 90 have higher crime rates than people with IQs below or above this range, with the peak range being between 80 and 90.

The 2009 ''Handbook of Crime Correlates'' stated that reviews have found that around eight IQ points, or 0.5 SD, separate criminals from the general population, especially for persistent serious offenders. It has been suggested that this simply reflects that "only dumb ones get caught" but there is similarly a negative relation between IQ and self-reported offending. That children with conduct disorder have lower IQ than their peers "strongly argue" against the theory.

A study of the relationship between US county-level IQ and US county-level crime rates found that higher average IQs were associated with lower levels of property crime, burglary, larceny rate, motor vehicle theft, violent crime, robbery, and aggravated assault. These results were not "confounded by a measure of concentrated disadvantage that captures the effects of race, poverty, and other social disadvantages of the county."

Other correlations with IQ

In addition, IQ and its correlation to health, violent crime, gross state product, and government effectiveness are the subject of a 2006 paper in the publication ''Intelligence''. The paper breaks down IQ averages by U.S. states using the federal government's National Assessment of Educational Progress math and reading test scores as a source.

The American Psychological Association's 1995 report ''Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns'' stated that the correlations for most "negative outcome" variables are typically smaller than 0.20, which means that the explained variance is less than 4%.

Tambs ''et al.'' found that occupational status, educational attainment, and IQ are individually heritable; and further found that "genetic variance influencing educational attainment ... contributed approximately one-fourth of the genetic variance for occupational status and nearly half the genetic variance for IQ." In a sample of U.S. siblings, Rowe ''et al.'' report that the inequality in education and income was predominantly due to genes, with shared environmental factors playing a subordinate role.

There are also other correlations such as those between religiosity and intelligence and fertility and intelligence.

Real-life accomplishments

Average adult combined IQs associated with real-life accomplishments by various tests:

Neurosurgeons, research scientists, university professors 135+

MDs or PhDs 125 (WAIS-R, 1987)

College graduates 112 (KAIT, 2000; K-BIT, 1992), 115 (WAIS-R)

1–3 years of college 104 (KAIT, K-BIT), 105-110 (WAIS-R)

Clerical and sales workers 100-105

High school graduates, skilled workers (e.g., electricians, cabinetmakers) 100 (KAIT, WAIS-R), 97 (K-BIT)

1–3 years of high school (completed 9–11 years of school) 94 (KAIT), 90 (K-BIT), 95 (WAIS-R)

Semi-skilled workers (e.g., truck drivers, factory workers) 90-95

Elementary school graduates (completed eighth grade) 90

Elementary school dropouts (completed 0–7 years of school) 80-85

Have 50/50 chance of reaching high school 75

Average IQ of various occupational groups:

Professional and technical 112

Managers and administrators 104

Clerical workers; sales workers; skilled workers, craftsmen, and foremen 101

Semi-skilled workers (operatives, service workers, including private household; farmers and farm managers) 92

Unskilled workers 87

Type of work that can be accomplished:

Adults can harvest vegetables, repair furniture 60

Adults can do domestic work, simple carpentry 50

Adults can mow lawns, do simple laundry 40

There is considerable variation within and overlap between these categories. People with high IQs are found at all levels of education and occupational categories. The biggest difference occurs for low IQs with only an occasional college graduate or professional scoring below 90.

Group differences

Among the most controversial issues related to the study of intelligence is the observation that intelligence measures such as IQ scores vary between ethnic and racial groups and sexes. While there is little scholarly debate about the ''existence'' of some of these differences, their ''causes'' remain highly controversial both within academia and in the public sphere.

Sex

Most IQ tests are constructed so that there are no overall score differences between females and males. Because environmental factors affect brain activity and behavior, where differences are found, it can be difficult for researchers to assess whether or not the differences are innate. Areas where differences have been found include verbal and mathematical ability.

Race

The 1996 Task Force investigation on Intelligence sponsored by the American Psychological Association concluded that there are significant variations in IQ across races. The problem of determining the causes underlying this variation relates to the question of the contributions of "nature and nurture" to IQ. Psychologists such as Alan S. Kaufman and Nathan Brody and statisticians such as Bernie Devlin argue that there are insufficient data to conclude that this is because of genetic influences. One of the most notable researchers arguing for a strong genetic influence on these average score differences is Arthur Jensen. In contrast, other researchers such as Richard Nisbett argue that environmental factors can explain all of the average group differences.

Public policy

In the United States, certain public policies and laws regarding military service, education, public benefits, capital punishment, and employment incorporate an individual's IQ into their decisions. However, in the case of Griggs v. Duke Power Co. in 1971, for the purpose of minimizing employment practices that disparately impacted racial minorities, the U.S. Supreme Court banned the use of IQ tests in employment, except in very rare cases. Internationally, certain public policies, such as improving nutrition and prohibiting neurotoxins, have as one of their goals raising, or preventing a decline in, intelligence.

A diagnosis of mental retardation is in part based on the results of IQ testing. Borderline intellectual functioning is a categorization where a person has below average cognitive ability (an IQ of 71–85), but the deficit is not as severe as mental retardation (70 or below).

Criticism and views

Relation between IQ and intelligence

IQ is the most researched approach to intelligence and by far the most widely used in practical setting. However, although IQ attempts to measure some notion of intelligence, it may fail to act as an accurate measure of "intelligence" in its broadest sense. IQ tests only examine particular areas embodied by the broadest notion of "intelligence", failing to account for certain areas which are also associated with "intelligence" such as creativity or emotional intelligence.

There are critics who do not dispute the stability of IQ test scores or the fact that they predict certain forms of achievement rather effectively. They do argue, however, that to base a concept of intelligence on IQ test scores alone is to ignore many important aspects of mental ability.

Criticism of ''g''

Some scientists dispute IQ entirely. In ''The Mismeasure of Man'' (1996), paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould criticized IQ tests and argued that that they were used for scientific racism. He argued that ''g'' was a mathematical artifact and criticized:

Psychologist Peter Schönemann was also a persistent critic of IQ, calling it "the IQ myth". He argued that g is a flawed theory and that the high heritability estimates of IQ are based on false assumptions.

Psychologist Arthur Jensen has rejected the criticism by Gould and also argued that even if ''g'' was replaced by a model with several intelligences this would change the situation less than expected. All tests of cognitive ability would continue to be highly correlated with one another and there would still be a black-white gap on cognitive tests. James R. Flynn, an intelligence researcher known for his criticisms of racial theories of intelligence, similarly argued that "Gould's book evades all of [Arthur] Jensen's best arguments for a genetic component in the black-white IQ gap by positing that they are dependent on the concept of ''g'' as a general intelligence factor. Therefore, Gould believes that if he can discredit ''g'' no more need be said. This is manifestly false. Jensen's arguments would bite no matter whether blacks suffered from a score deficit on one or 10 or 100 factors."

Test bias

The American Psychological Association's report ''Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns'' stated that in the United States IQ tests as predictors of social achievement are not biased against African Americans since they predict future performance, such as school achievement, similarly to the way they predict future performance for Whites.

However, IQ tests may well be biased when used in other situations. A 2005 study stated that "differential validity in prediction suggests that the WAIS-R test may contain cultural influences that reduce the validity of the WAIS-R as a measure of cognitive ability for Mexican American students," indicating a weaker positive correlation relative to sampled white students. Other recent studies have questioned the culture-fairness of IQ tests when used in South Africa. Standard intelligence tests, such as the Stanford-Binet, are often inappropriate for children with autism; the alternative of using developmental or adaptive skills measures are relatively poor measures of intelligence in autistic children, and may have resulted in incorrect claims that a majority of children with autism are mentally retarded.

Outdated methodology

A 2006 article stated that contemporary psychologic research often did not reflect substantial recent developments in psychometrics and "bears an uncanny resemblance to the psychometric state of the art as it existed in the 1950s." However, it also states that an "increasing number of psychometrically informed research papers that have been appearing in the past decade."

"Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns"

In response to the controversy surrounding ''The Bell Curve'', the American Psychological Association's Board of Scientific Affairs established a task force in 1995 to write a report on the state of intelligence research which could be used by all sides as a basis for discussion, "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns". The full text of the report is available through several websites.

In this paper the representatives of the association regret that IQ-related works are frequently written with a view to their political consequences: "research findings were often assessed not so much on their merits or their scientific standing as on their supposed political implications".

The task force concluded that IQ scores do have high predictive validity for individual differences in school achievement. They confirm the predictive validity of IQ for adult occupational status, even when variables such as education and family background have been statistically controlled. They stated that individual differences in intelligence are substantially influenced by both genetics and environment.

The report stated that a number of biological factors, including malnutrition, exposure to toxic substances, and various prenatal and perinatal stressors, result in lowered psychometric intelligence under at least some conditions. The task force agrees that large differences do exist between the average IQ scores of blacks and whites. "The cause of that differential is not known; it is apparently not due to any simple form of bias in the content or administration of the tests themselves. The Flynn effect shows that environmental factors can produce differences of at least this magnitude, but that effect is mysterious in its own right. Several culturally based explanations of the Black/ White IQ differential have been proposed; some are plausible, but so far none has been conclusively supported. There is even less empirical support for a genetic interpretation. In short, no adequate explanation of the differential between the IQ means of Blacks and Whites is presently available."

The APA journal that published the statement, ''American Psychologist,'' subsequently published eleven critical responses in January 1997, several of them arguing that the report failed to examine adequately the evidence for partly genetic explanations.

High IQ societies

There are social organizations, some international, which limit membership to people who have scores as high as or higher than the 98th percentile on some IQ test or equivalent. Mensa International is perhaps the most well known of these. There are other groups requiring a score above the 98th percentile.

Reference charts

IQ reference charts are tables suggested by test publishers to divide intelligence ranges in various categories.

See also

Child prodigy

Cultural intelligence

Curiosity quotient

Developmental disability

Educational quotient

Genius

Intellectual giftedness

Late bloomer

Learning disability

Malleable intelligence

Nature versus nurture

Savant syndrome

Sentience quotient

Social IQ

Spiritual intelligence

References

Further reading

External links

Human Intelligence: biographical profiles, current controversies, resources for teachers

Classics in the History of Psychology

Category:Intelligence tests Category:Psychometrics Category:Intelligence Category:Intelligence by type

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name	William Bradford Shockley Jr.
birth date	February 13, 1910
birth place	London, England, United Kingdom
death date	August 12, 1989
death place	Stanford, California, United States
alma mater	Caltech MIT
nationality	American
known for	Transistor
prizes
work institution	Bell Labs Shockley Semiconductor Stanford
doctoral advisor	John C. Slater
religion	Atheism }}

William Bradford Shockley Jr. (February 13, 1910 – August 12, 1989) was an American physicist and inventor. Along with John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain, Shockley co-invented the transistor, for which all three were awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Shockley's attempts to commercialize a new transistor design in the 1950s and 1960s led to California's "Silicon Valley" becoming a hotbed of electronics innovation. In his later life, Shockley was a professor at Stanford and became a staunch advocate of eugenics.

Biography

Early years

Shockley was born in London, England to American parents, and raised in his family's hometown of Palo Alto, California. His father, William senior, was a mining engineer who speculated in mines for a living, and spoke eight languages. His mother, Mary, grew up in the American West, graduated from Stanford University, and became the first female US Deputy mining surveyor.

He received his Bachelor of Science degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1932. While still a student, Shockley married Iowan Jean Bailey in August 1933. In March 1934 Jean had a baby girl, Alison; she also had a son, Richard (Dick). Shockley was awarded his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1936. The title of his doctoral thesis was ''Electronic Bands in Sodium Chloride,'' and was suggested by his thesis advisor, John C. Slater. After receiving his doctorate, he joined a research group headed by Clinton Davisson at Bell Labs in New Jersey. The next few years were productive ones for Shockley. He published a number of fundamental papers on solid state physics in Physical Review. In 1938, he got his first patent, "Electron Discharge Device" on electron multipliers.

When World War II broke out, Shockley became involved in radar research at the labs in Whippany, New Jersey. In May 1942 he took leave from Bell Labs to become a research director at Columbia University's Anti-Submarine Warfare Operations Group. This involved devising methods for countering the tactics of submarines with improved convoying techniques, optimizing depth charge patterns, and so on. This project required frequent trips to the Pentagon and Washington, where Shockley met many high ranking officers and government officials. In 1944 he organized a training program for B-29 bomber pilots to use new radar bombsights. In late 1944 he took a three month tour to bases around the world to assess the results. For this project, Secretary of War Robert Patterson awarded Shockley the Medal for Merit on October 17, 1946.

In July 1945, the War Department asked Shockley to prepare a report on the question of probable casualties from an invasion of the Japanese mainland. Shockley concluded:

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This prediction influenced the decision for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to force Japan to surrender without an invasion.

Solid-state transistor

Shortly after the end of the war in 1945, Bell Labs formed a Solid State Physics Group, led by Shockley and chemist Stanley Morgan, which included John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, physicist Gerald Pearson, chemist Robert Gibney, electronics expert Hilbert Moore, and several technicians. Their assignment was to seek a solid-state alternative to fragile glass vacuum tube amplifiers. Its first attempts were based on Shockley's ideas about using an external electrical field on a semiconductor to affect its conductivity. These experiments failed every time in all sorts of configurations and materials. The group was at a standstill until Bardeen suggested a theory that invoked surface states that prevented the field from penetrating the semiconductor. The group changed its focus to study these surface states and they met almost daily to discuss the work. The rapport of the group was excellent, and ideas were freely exchanged.

By the winter of 1946 they had enough results that Bardeen submitted a paper on the surface states to ''Physical Review''. Brattain started experiments to study the surface states through observations made while shining a bright light on the semiconductor's surface. This led to several more papers (one of them co-authored with Shockley), which estimated the density of the surface states to be more than enough to account for their failed experiments. The pace of the work picked up significantly when they started to surround point contacts between the semiconductor and the conducting wires with electrolytes. Moore built a circuit that allowed them to vary the frequency of the input signal easily. Finally they began to get some evidence of power amplification when Pearson, acting on a suggestion by Shockley, put a voltage on a droplet of glycol borate (a viscous chemical that did not evaporate) placed across a P-N junction.

December 1947 was Bell Labs' "Miracle Month," when Bardeen and Brattain – working without Shockley – succeeded in creating a point-contact transistor that achieved amplification. Within the next month, Bell Labs' patent attorneys started to work on the patent applications.

Bell Labs' attorneys soon discovered Shockley's field effect principle had been anticipated and devices based on it patented in 1930 by Julius Lilienfeld, who filed his MESFET-like patent in Canada on October 22, 1925. Although the patent appeared "breakable" (it could not work) the patent attorneys based one of its four patent applications only on the Bardeen-Brattain point contact design. Three others (submitted first) covered the electrolyte-based transistors with Bardeen, Gibney and Brattain as the inventors. Shockley's name was not on any of these patent applications. This angered Shockley, who thought his name should also be on the patents because the work was based on his field effect idea. He even made efforts to have the patent written only in his name, and told Bardeen and Brattain of his intentions.

At the same time he secretly continued his own work to build a different sort of transistor based on junctions instead of point contacts; he expected this kind of design would be more likely to be commercially viable. The point contact transistor, he believed, would prove to be fragile and difficult to manufacture. Shockley was also dissatisfied with certain parts of the explanation for how the point contact transistor worked and conceived of the possibility of minority carrier injection. Shockley worked out a rather complete description of what he called the "sandwich" transistor, and a first proof of principle was obtained on April 7, 1949.

This resulted in his invention of the junction transistor, which was announced at a press conference on July 4, 1951. Shockley obtained a patent for this invention on September 25, 1951. Different fabrication methods for this device were developed over the next several years, but a diffusion based/photolithographic procedure quickly became the method of choice for many applications. It soon eclipsed the point contact transistor, and it and its offspring became overwhelmingly dominant in the marketplace for many years. Shockley continued as a group head to lead much of the effort at Bell Labs to improve it and its fabrication for two more years.

Meanwhile, Shockley worked furiously on his magnum opus, ''Electrons and Holes in Semiconductors'' which was finally published as a 558 page treatise in 1950. In it, Shockley worked out the critical ideas of drift and diffusion and the differential equations that govern the flow of electrons in solid state crystals. Shockley's diode equation is also described. This seminal work became the "bible" for an entire generation of scientists working to develop and improve new variants of the transistor and other devices based on semiconductors.

In 1951, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). He was forty-one years old; this was rather young for such an election. Two years later, he was chosen as the recipient of the prestigious Comstock Prize for Physics by the NAS, and was the recipient of many other awards and honors.

The ensuing publicity generated by the "invention of the transistor" often thrust Shockley to the fore, much to the chagrin of Bardeen and Brattain. Bell Labs management, however, consistently presented all three inventors as a team. Shockley eventually infuriated and alienated Bardeen and Brattain, and he essentially blocked the two from working on the junction transistor. Bardeen began pursuing a theory for superconductivity and left Bell Labs in 1951. Brattain refused to work with Shockley further and was assigned to another group. Neither Bardeen nor Brattain had much to do with the development of the transistor beyond the first year after its invention.

Shockley's abrasive management style caused him to be passed over for executive promotion at Bell Labs, which also felt he was a greater asset as a research scientist and theorist. Shockley wanted the power and profit he felt he deserved. He took a leave from Bell Labs in 1953 and moved back to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) for four months as a visiting professor.

Shockley Semiconductor

Eventually he was given a chance to run his own company, as a division of a Caltech friend's successful electronics firm. In 1955, Shockley joined Beckman Instruments, where he was appointed as the Director of Beckman's newly founded Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory division at 391 San Antonio Road, Mountain View, California. With his prestige and Beckman's capital, Shockley attempted to lure some of his former colleagues from Bell Labs to his new lab, but none of them would join him. Instead, Shockley started scouring universities for the brightest graduates to build a company from scratch, one that would be run "his way".

"His way" could generally be summed up as domineering and increasingly paranoid. In one well-known incident, he claimed that a secretary's cut thumb was the result of a malicious act and he demanded lie detector tests to find the culprit. It was later demonstrated the cut was caused by a broken thumbtack on the office door, and the research staff was henceforth increasingly hostile. Meanwhile, his demands to create a new and technically difficult device (originally called a Shockley diode and now modified to become the thyristor), meant that the project was moving very slowly.

In late 1957, eight of Shockley's researchers, who called themselves "The Traitorous Eight," resigned after Shockley decided not to continue research into silicon-based semiconductors. After a meeting with Sherman Fairchild and procurement of seed capital from Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation, they started Fairchild Semiconductor. "The Traitorous Eight" included Robert Noyce and Gordon E. Moore, who would later leave Fairchild and form Intel Corporation. Other offspring companies of Fairchild Semiconductor include National Semiconductor and Advanced Micro Devices.

Thus, over the course of just 20 years, a mere eight of Shockley’s former employees gave forth 65 new enterprises, which then went on to do the same.... Shockley Semiconductor and these companies formed the nucleus of what became Silicon Valley, which revolutionized the world of electronics and, indeed, the world itself.

While Shockley was still trying to get his three-state device to work, Fairchild and Texas Instruments both introduced the first integrated circuits, making Shockley's work in that area essentially superfluous. Shockley did manage to get the three-state device to work but failed to make it commercially successful.

In 1961 he and Hans Queisser derived the maximal theoretical efficiency of a simple solar cell, subsequently known as the Shockley-Queisser limit.

The firm was sold in 1960 and became a part of ITT in 1968.

Sidelights

Shockley was popular as speaker, lecturer, and an amateur magician. He once magically produced a bouquet of roses at the end of his address before the American Physical Society. He was also famed in his early years for his elaborate practical jokes. He became an accomplished rock climber, going often to the Shawangunks in the Hudson River Valley, where he pioneered a route across an overhang, known to this day as "Shockley's Ceiling."

He was first to propose a lognormal distribution to model the creation process for scientific research papers.

He was an atheist.

Later years

Shockley separated from his wife Jean in the spring of 1954, divorcing her that summer. Shortly after forming Shockley Semiconductor, on November 23, 1955, Shockley married Emmy Lanning, a teacher of psychiatric nursing from upstate New York. They had a very happy marriage that lasted until his death in 1989.

In July 1961, Shockley, his wife, and son Dick were involved in a serious automobile accident: Shockley required several months to recover from his injuries.

When Shockley was eased out of the directorship of Shockley Semiconductor, he joined Stanford University, where he was appointed the Alexander M. Poniatoff Professor of Engineering and Applied Science.

Shockley's last patent was granted in 1968, for a rather complex semiconductor device.

Statements about populations and genetics

Late in his life, Shockley became intensely interested in questions of race, intelligence, and eugenics. He thought this work was important to the genetic future of the human species, and came to describe it as the most important work of his career, even though expressing such politically unpopular views risked damaging his reputation. When asked why he seemed to take positions associated with both the political right and left, Shockley explained that his goal was "the application of scientific ingenuity to the solution of human problems."

Shockley argued that the higher rate of reproduction among the less intelligent was having a dysgenic effect, and that a drop in average intelligence would ultimately lead to a decline in civilization. Shockley advocated that the scientific community should seriously investigate questions of heredity, intelligence, and demographic trends, and suggest policy changes if he was proven right.

Although Shockley was concerned about dysgenic effects among both blacks and whites, he perceived the situation among blacks as more problematic. According to 1970 Census, unskilled and skilled whites had on average 3.7 and 2.3 children, respectively, whereas the corresponding numbers for blacks were 5.4 and 1.9. Because IQ is a heritable trait, Shockley expressed concern that the black population would become progressively less intelligent, countering all the gains that had been made by the Civil Rights movement. Shockley's views on this topic, expressed in his publications and lectures, were based in part on the subsequently discredited work of Cyril Burt. Shockley also proposed that individuals with IQs below 100 be paid to undergo voluntary sterilization.

He donated sperm to the Repository for Germinal Choice, a sperm bank founded by Robert Klark Graham in hopes of spreading humanity's best genes. The bank, called by the media the "Nobel Prize sperm bank," claimed to have three Nobel Prize-winning donors, though Shockley was the only one to publicly acknowledge his donation to the sperm bank. However, Shockley's controversial views brought the Repository for Germinal Choice notable publicity and may have discouraged other Nobel Prize winners from donating sperm.

While the "Nobel sperm bank" issue was in the news, Playboy magazine published in its August 1980 issue a lengthy interview with Shockley. Although Hugh Hefner, the magazine's publisher, was not particularly sympathetic to Shockley's views, this in-depth interview nonetheless provided an opportunity for the professor to clarify his views on eugenics and the social implications of racial differences, and to defend his side of the controversy to a wider audience. In 1981 he filed a libel suit against the ''Atlanta Constitution'' after a reporter called him a "Hitlerite" and compared his racial views to those of the Nazis. Shockley won the suit but received only US$1 in damages. Shockley's biographer sums this up as saying that the statement was defamatory, but Shockley's reputation was not worth much by the time the trial reached a verdict.

In his later years Shockley took several precautions to improve his interactions with the media, to little avail. He taped his telephone conversations with reporters, and then sent the transcript to them by registered mail. At one point he toyed with the idea of making them take a simple quiz on his work before discussing the subject with them. His habit of saving all his papers, even laundry lists, provides abundant documentation for researchers on his life.

Edgar G. Epps argued that "William Shockley's position lends itself to racist interpretations". Daniel J. Kevles mentioned that Shockley "invited ridicule as a racist and biological ignoramus". Anthropologist Roger Pearson has defended Shockley, arguing that Shockley’s views were misrepresented in the popular media by journalists who lacked a proper understanding of the topics Shockley wrote about, and that his views were in fact shared by many other scholars who were reluctant to publicly defend him due to fear of being attacked themselves.

Death

He died in 1989 of prostate cancer.

By the time of his death he was almost completely estranged from most of his friends and family, except his wife. His children are reported to have learned of his death only through the print media.

A group of about 30 colleagues, who have met on and off since 1956, met at Stanford in 2002 to reminisce about their time with Shockley and his central role in sparking the information technology revolution, its organizer saying "Shockley is the man who brought silicon to Silicon Valley."

PBS claims that Shockley had attempted suicide by playing a solo game of Russian roulette.

Honors

He received the Comstock Prize in Physics of the National Academy of Sciences in 1953.

He was the first recipient of the Oliver E. Buckley Solid State Physics Prize of the American Physical Society in 1953.

Shockley was a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics in 1956, along with Bardeen and Brattain. In his Nobel lecture, he gave full credit to Brattain and Bardeen as the inventors of the point-contact transistor. The three of them, together with wives and guests, had a rather raucous late-night champagne-fueled party to celebrate together.

Holley Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1963.

He received honorary science doctorates from the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers University in New Jersey and Gustavus Adolphus Colleges in Minnesota.

Maurice Liebman Memorial Prize from the Institute of Radio Engineers (now the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)) in 1980.

Shockley was named by ''Time Magazine'' as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.

Patents

Shockley was granted over ninety US patents. Some notable ones are: Applied for on Sept. 24, 1948; his first granted patent involving transistors. His earliest applied for (June 26, 1948) patent involving transistors. Applied for on July 22, 1952; Used in computers. Applied for on Oct. 28, 1954; The diffusion process for implantation of impurities. Applied for on Feb. 20, 1959; Improvements on process for production of basic materials. Applied for on Sept. 26, 1960; Exploring other semiconductors.

Bibliography

Prewar scientific articles by Shockley

An Electron Microscope for Filaments: Emission and Adsorption by Tungsten Single Crystals, R. P. Johnson and W. Shockley, Phys. Rev. 49, 436 - 440 (1936).

Optical Absorption by the Alkali Halides, J. C. Slater and W. Shockley, Phys. Rev. 50, 705 - 719 (1936).

Electronic Energy Bands in Sodium Chloride, William Shockley, Phys. Rev. 50, 754 - 759 (1936).

The Empty Lattice Test of the Cellular Method in Solids, W. Shockley, Phys. Rev. 52, 866 - 872 (1937).

On the Surface States Associated with a Periodic Potential, William Shockley, Phys. Rev. 56, 317 - 323 (1939).

The Self-Diffusion of Copper, J. Steigman, W. Shockley and F. C. Nix, Phys. Rev. 56, 13 - 21 (1939).

Books by Shockley

Shockley, William – ''Electrons and holes in semiconductors, with applications to transistor electronics'', Krieger (1956) ISBN 0-88275-382-7.

Shockley, William and Gong, Walter A – ''Mechanics'' Charles E. Merrill, Inc. (1966).

Shockley, William and Pearson, Roger – ''Shockley on Eugenics and Race: The Application of Science to the Solution of Human Problems'' Scott-Townsend (1992) ISBN 1-878465-03-1.

Books about Shockley

Joel N. Shurkin; ''Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age''. New York: Palgrave Macmillan (2006) ISBN 1-4039-8815-3

Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson; ''Crystal Fire: The Invention of the Transistor and the Birth of the Information Age''. New York: Norton (1997) ISBN 0-393-31851-6 pbk.

Roger Pearson; ''Shockley on Eugenics and Race: The Application of Science to the Solution of Human Problems''. Washington DC: Scott Townsend Publishers (1992) ISBN 1-878465-26-0 pbk.

References

External links

National Academy of Sciences biography

Nobel biography

Nobel Lecture

PBS biography

Gordon Moore. Biography of William Shockley ''Time Magazine''

Interview with Shockley biographer Joel Shurkin

History of the transistor

Simulation of a BJT in the Common Emitter Circuit

Bipolar Transistors - The Transistor as a Switch - Active Region

Lessons In Electric Circuits – Bipolar Junction Transistors

EncycloBEAMia – Bipolar Junction Transistor

Shockley and Bardeen-Brattain patent disputes

Series of Slate.com Articles on the controversial sperm bank

The genius factory

William Shockley vs. Francis Cress-Welsing (Tony Brown Show, 1974)

A Shockley website (shockleytransistor.com) has been established, using the company name, to honor Shockley and those who first processed silicon in Silicon Valley.

Category:1910 births Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Category:1989 deaths Category:American atheists Category:American eugenicists Category:American inventors Category:American Nobel laureates Category:American physicists Category:California Institute of Technology alumni Category:Experimental physicists Category:IEEE Medal of Honor recipients Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Category:National Inventors Hall of Fame inductees Category:Nobel laureates in Physics Category:Deaths from prostate cancer Category:Quantum physicists Category:Race and intelligence controversy Category:Scientists at Bell Labs Category:Semiconductor physicists Category:Silicon Valley people Category:Stanford University faculty Category:Sperm donation Category:Cancer deaths in California Category:National Academy of Sciences laureates

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African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans or Afro-Americans, and formerly as American Negroes) are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa. In the United States, the terms are generally used for Americans with at least partial Sub-Saharan African ancestry. Most African Americans are the direct descendants of captive Africans who survived the slavery era within the boundaries of the present United States, although some are—or are descended from—immigrants from African, Caribbean, Central American or South American nations. As an adjective, the term is usually written as ''African-American''.

African-American history starts in the 17th century with indentured servitude in British America and progresses onto the election of Barack Obama as the 44th and current President of the United States. Between those landmarks there were other events and issues, both resolved and ongoing, that were faced by African Americans. Some of these were slavery, reconstruction, development of the African-American community, participation in the great military conflicts of the United States, racial segregation, and the Civil Rights Movement. African Americans make up the single largest racial minority in the United States and form the second largest racial group after whites in the United States.

History

Slavery era

The first recorded Africans in British North America (including most of the future United States) arrived in 1619 as indentured servants who settled in Jamestown, Virginia. As English settlers died from harsh conditions, more and more Africans were brought to work as laborers. Africans for many years were similar in legal position to poor English indenturees, who traded several years labor in exchange for passage to America. Africans could legally raise crops and cattle to purchase their freedom. They raised families, marrying other Africans and sometimes intermarrying with Native Americans or English settlers. By the 1640s and 1650s, several African families owned farms around Jamestown and some became wealthy by colonial standards.

The popular conception of a race-based slave system did not fully develop until the 18th century. The first black congregations and churches were organized before 1800 in both northern and southern cities following the Great Awakening. By 1775, Africans made up 20% of the population in the American colonies, which made them the second largest ethnic group after the English. During the 1770s, Africans, both enslaved and free, helped rebellious English colonists secure American Independence by defeating the British in the American Revolution. Africans and Englishmen fought side by side and were fully integrated. James Armistead, an African American, played a large part in making possible the 1781 Yorktown victory, which established the United States as an independent nation. Other prominent African Americans were Prince Whipple and Oliver Cromwell, who are both depicted in the front of the boat in George Washington's famous ''1776 Crossing the Delaware'' portrait.

By 1860, there were 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the United States due to the Atlantic slave trade, and another 500,000 African Americans lived free across the country. In 1863, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation declared that all slaves in states which had seceded from the Union were free. Advancing Union troops enforced the proclamation with Texas being the last state to be emancipated in 1865.

Reconstruction and Jim Crow

[[File:Jesse Owens1.jpg|thumb|right|Jesse Owens shook racial stereotypes both with Nazis and segregationists in the USA at the 1936 Berlin olympics.]] African Americans quickly set up congregations for themselves, as well as schools, community and civic associations, to have space away from white control or oversight. While the post-war reconstruction era was initially a time of progress for African Americans, in the late 1890s, Southern states enacted Jim Crow laws to enforce racial segregation and disenfranchisement. Most African Americans followed the Jim Crow laws, using a mask of compliance to prevent becoming victims of racially motivated violence. To maintain self-esteem and dignity, African Americans such as Anthony Overton and Mary McLeod Bethune continued to build their own schools, churches, banks, social clubs, and other businesses.

In the last decade of the 19th century, racially discriminatory laws and racial violence aimed at African Americans began to mushroom in the United States. These discriminatory acts included racial segregation—upheld by the United States Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896—which was legally mandated by southern states and nationwide at the local level of government, voter suppression or disenfranchisement in the southern states, denial of economic opportunity or resources nationwide, and private acts of violence and mass racial violence aimed at African Americans unhindered or encouraged by government authorities.

Great Migration and Civil Rights Movement

The desperate conditions of African Americans in the South that sparked the Great Migration of the early 20th century, combined with a growing African American community in the Northern United States, led to a movement to fight violence and discrimination against African Americans that, like abolitionism before it, crossed racial lines. The Civil Rights Movement from 1954 to 1968 was directed at abolishing racial discrimination against African Americans, particularly in the Southern United States. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the conditions which brought it into being are credited with putting pressure on President John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

Johnson put his support behind passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and labor unions, and the Voting Rights Act (1965), which expanded federal authority over states to ensure black political participation through protection of voter registration and elections. By 1966, the emergence of the Black Power movement, which lasted from 1966 to 1975, expanded upon the aims of the Civil Rights Movement to include economic and political self-sufficiency, and freedom from white authority.

Post-Civil Rights era

Politically and economically, blacks have made substantial strides during the post-civil rights era. In 1989, Douglas Wilder became the first African-American elected governor in U.S. history. There is currently one black governor; governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts. Clarence Thomas became the second African-American Supreme Court Justice.In 1992 Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois became the first black woman elected to the U.S. Senate. There were 8,936 black officeholders in the United States in 2000, showing a net increase of 7,467 since 1970. In 2001 there were 484 black mayors.

On November 4, 2008, Democratic Senator Barack Obama defeated Republican Senator John McCain to become the first African American to be elected President. At least 95 percent of African-American voters voted for Obama. He also received overwhelming support from young and educated whites, a majority of Asians, Hispanics, and Native Americans picking up a number of new states in the Democratic electoral column. Obama lost the overall white vote, although he won a larger proportion of white votes than any previous nonincumbent Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter. The following year Michael S. Steele was elected the first African-American chairman of the national Republican Party.

Demographics

In 1790, when the first U.S. Census was taken, Africans (including slaves and free people) numbered about 760,000—about 19.3% of the population. In 1860, at the start of the Civil War, the African American population had increased to 4.4 million, but the percentage rate dropped to 14% of the overall population of the country. The vast majority were slaves, with only 488,000 counted as "freemen". By 1900, the black population had doubled and reached 8.8 million. In 1910, about 90% of African Americans lived in the South, but large numbers began migrating north looking for better job opportunities and living conditions, and to escape Jim Crow laws and racial violence. The Great Migration, as it was called, spanned the 1890s to the 1970s. From 1916 through the 1960s, more than 6 million black people moved north. But in the 1970s and 1980s, that trend reversed, with more African Americans moving south to the Sun Belt than leaving it.

The following table of the African American population in the United States over time shows that the African American population, as a percentage of the total population, declined until 1930 and has been rising since then. {|class="wikitable" style="float:left; font-size:85%;" African Americans in the United States ! Year || Number || % of total population || Slaves || % in slavery |- | 1790 || 757,208 || 19.3% (highest) || 697,681 || 92% |- | 1800 || 1,002,037 || 18.9% || 893,602 || 89% |- | 1810 || 1,377,808 || 19.0% || 1,191,362 || 86% |- | 1820 || 1,771,656 || 18.4% || 1,538,022 || 87% |- | 1830 || 2,328,642 || 18.1% || 2,009,043 || 86% |- | 1840 || 2,873,648 || 16.8% || 2,487,355 || 87% |- | 1850 || 3,638,808 || 15.7% || 3,204,287 || 88% |- | 1860 || 4,441,830 || 14.1% || 3,953,731 || 89% |- | 1870 || 4,880,009 || 12.7% || – || – |- | 1880 || 6,580,793 || 13.1% || – || – |- | 1890 || 7,488,788 || 11.9% || – || – |- | 1900 || 8,833,994 || 11.6% || – || – |- | 1910 || 9,827,763 || 10.7% || – || – |- | 1920 || 10.5 million || 9.9% || – || – |- | 1930 || 11.9 million || 9.7% (lowest) || – || – |- | 1940 || 12.9 million || 9.8% || – || – |- | 1950 || 15.0 million || 10.0% || – || – |- | 1960 || 18.9 million || 10.5% || – || – |- | 1970 || 22.6 million || 11.1% || – || – |- | 1980 || 26.5 million || 11.7% || – || – |- | 1990 || 30.0 million || 12.1% || – || – |- | 2000 || 36.6 million || 12.3% || – || – |- | 2010 || 38.9 million || 12.6% || – || – |- |}

By 1990, the African American population reached about 30 million and represented 12% of the U.S. population, roughly the same proportion as in 1900. In current demographics, according to 2005 U.S. Census figures, some 39.9 million African Americans live in the United States, comprising 13.8% of the total population. The World Factbook gives a 2006 figure of 12.9% Controversy has surrounded the "accurate" population count of African Americans for decades. The NAACP believed it was under counted intentionally to minimize the significance of the black population in order to reduce their political power base.

At the time of the 2000 Census, 54.8% of African Americans lived in the South. In that year, 17.6% of African Americans lived in the Northeast and 18.7% in the Midwest, while only 8.9% lived in the western states. The west does have a sizable black population in certain areas, however. California, the nation's most populous state, has the fifth largest African American population, only behind New York, Texas, Georgia, and Florida. According to the 2000 Census, approximately 2.05% of African Americans identified as Hispanic or Latino in origin, many of whom may be of Brazilian, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, Haitian, or other Latin American descent. The only self-reported ''ancestral'' groups larger than African Americans are the Irish and Germans. Because many African Americans trace their ancestry to colonial American origins, some simply self-identify as "American".

U.S. cities

Almost 58% of African Americans lived in metropolitan areas in 2000. With over 2 million black residents, New York City had the largest black urban population in the United States in 2000, overall the city has a 28% black population. Chicago has the second largest black population, with almost 1.6 million African Americans in its metropolitan area, representing about 18 percent of the total metropolitan population.

Among cities of 100,000 or more, Detroit, Michigan had the highest percentage of black residents of any U.S. city in 2010, with 82%. Other large cities with African American majorities include New Orleans, Louisiana (60%), Baltimore, Maryland (63%) Atlanta, Georgia (54%), Memphis, Tennessee (61%), and Washington, D.C. (50.7%).

The nation's most affluent county with an African American majority is Prince George's County, Maryland, with a median income of $62,467. Within that county, among the wealthiest communities are Glenn Dale, Maryland and Fort Washington, Maryland. Other affluent predominantly African American counties include Dekalb County in Georgia, and Charles City County in Virginia. Queens County, New York is the only county with a population of 65,000 or more where African Americans have a higher median household income than White Americans.

Religion

The majority of African Americans are Protestant of whom many follow the historically black churches. Black church refers to churches which minister predominantly African American congregations. Black congregations were first established by freed slaves at the end of the 17th century, and later when slavery was abolished more African Americans were allowed to create a unique form of Christianity that was culturally influenced by African spiritual traditions.

According to a 2007 survey, more than half of the African American population are part of the historically black churches. The largest Protestant denomination among African Americans are the Baptists, distributed in four denominations, the largest being the National Baptist Convention and the National Baptist Convention of America. The second largest are the Methodists, the largest sects are the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Pentecostals are mainly part of the Church of God in Christ. About 16% of African American Christians are members of white Protestant communions, these denominations (which include the United Church of Christ) mostly have a 2 to 3% African American membership. There are also large numbers of Roman Catholics, constituting 5% of the African American population. Of the total number of Jehovah's Witnesses, 22% are black.

Some African Americans follow Islam. Historically, between 15 to 30% of enslaved Africans brought to the Americas were Muslims, but most of these Africans were converted to Christianity during the era of American slavery. However during the 20th century, some African Americans converted to Islam, mainly through the influence of black nationalist groups that preached with distinctive Islamic practices; these include the Moorish Science Temple of America, though the largest organization was the Nation of Islam, founded during the 1930s, which attracted at least 20,000 people as of 1963, prominent members included activist Malcolm X and boxer Muhammad Ali.

Malcolm X is considered the first person to start the movement among African Americans towards mainstream Islam, after he left the Nation and made the pilgrimage to Mecca. In 1975, Warith Deen Mohammed, the son of Elijah Muhammad who took control of the Nation after his death, guided majority of its members to orthodox Islam. However, few members rejected these changes, in particular Louis Farrakhan, who revived the Nation of Islam in 1978 based on its original teachings.

African American Muslims constitute 20% of the total U.S. Muslim population, the majority are Sunni or orthodox Muslims, some of these identify under the community of W. Deen Mohammed. The Nation of Islam led by Louis Farrakhan has a membership from 20,000—50,000 members.

There are relatively few African American Jews; estimates of their number range from 20,000 to 200,000. Most of these Jews are part of mainstream groups such as the Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox branches of Judaism; although there are significant numbers of people who are part of non-mainstream Jewish groups, largely the Black Hebrew Israelites, whose beliefs include the claim that African Americans are descended from the Biblical Israelites.

Contemporary issues

African Americans have improved their social and economic standing significantly since the Civil Rights Movement and recent decades have witnessed the expansion of a robust, African American middle class across the United States. Unprecedented access to higher education and employment in addition to representation in the highest levels of American government has been gained by African Americans in the post-civil rights era.

Nevertheless, due in part to the legacy of slavery, racism and discrimination, African Americans as a group remain at a pronounced economic, educational and social disadvantage in many areas relative to European Americans. Persistent social, economic and political issues for many African Americans include inadequate health care access and delivery; institutional racism and discrimination in housing, education, policing, criminal justice and employment; crime, poverty and substance abuse.

One of the most serious and long standing issues within African American communities is poverty. Poverty itself is a hardship as it is related to marital stress and dissolution, health problems, low educational attainment, deficits in psychological functioning, and crime. In 2004, 24.7% of African American families lived below the poverty level. In 2007, the average African American income was $33,916, compared with $54,920 for whites.

Politics and social issues

Collectively, African Americans are more involved in the American political process than other minority groups in the United States, indicated by the highest level of voter registration and participation in elections among these groups in 2004. African Americans collectively attain higher levels of education than immigrants to the United States. African Americans also have the highest level of Congressional representation of any minority group in the U.S.

The large majority of African Americans support the Democratic Party. In the 2004 Presidential Election, Democrat John Kerry received 88% of the African American vote compared to 11% for Republican George W. Bush. Although there is an African-American lobby in foreign policy, it has not had the impact that African American organizations have had in domestic policy.

Historically, African Americans were supporters of the Republican Party because it was Republican President Abraham Lincoln who helped in granting freedom to American slaves; at the time, the Republicans and Democrats represented the sectional interests of the North and South, respectively, rather than any specific ideology, and both right and left were represented equally in both parties.

The African American trend of voting for Democrats can be traced back to the 1930s during the Great Depression, when Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program provided economic relief to African Americans; Roosevelt's New Deal coalition turned the Democratic Party into an organization of the working class and their liberal allies, regardless of region. The African American vote became even more solidly Democratic when Democratic presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson pushed for civil rights legislation during the 1960s.

After over 50 years, marriage rates for ''all'' Americans began to decline while divorce rates and out-of-wedlock births have climbed. These changes have been greatest among African Americans. After more than 70 years of racial parity black marriage rates began to fall behind whites. Single-parent households have become common, and according to US census figures released in January 2010, only 38 percent of black children live with both their parents. Despite that and heavy Democratic leanings, African Americans favor "traditional American values" about family and marriage.

While 52% of Democrats support same-sex marriage, only 30% of black Democrats do. In 2008, though Democrats overwhelmingly voted (64%) against the California ballot proposition banning gay marriage, blacks overwhelmingly approved (70% in favor) it, more than any other racial group. The high-profile candidacy of Barack Obama is credited with increasing black turnout on the bill which has been seen as the crucial difference in its passing.

Blacks also hold far more conservative opinions on abortion, extramarital sex, and raising children out of wedlock than Democrats as a whole. On financial issues, however, African Americans are very much in line with Democrats, generally supporting a more progressive tax structure to provide more services and reduce injustice and as well as more government spending on social services.

News media and coverage

News media coverage of African American news, concerns or dilemmas is inadequate, some activists and academics contend. Activists also contend that the news media present distorted images of African Americans. To combat this African Americans founded their own television networks. Black Entertainment Television, founded by Robert L. Johnson is a network that targets young African Americans and urban audiences in the United States.

Most programming on the network consists of rap and R&B; music videos and urban-oriented movies and series. Additionally, the channel shows syndicated television series, original programs, and some public affairs programs. On Sunday mornings, BET broadcasts a lineup of network-produced Christian programming; other, non-affiliated Christian programs are also shown during the early morning hours daily. BET is now a global network that reaches 85 million viewers in the Caribbean, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

In addition to BET there is Centric, which is a spin-off cable television channel of BET, created originally as BET on Jazz to showcase jazz music-related programming, especially that of black jazz musicians. Programming since has been expanded to include a block of urban programs as well as some R&B;, neo soul, and alternative hip hop, with the focus on jazz reduced to low-profile hours.

TV One is another African American-oriented network and a direct competitor to BET. It targets African American adults with a broad range of programming. The network airs original lifestyle and entertainment-oriented shows, movies, fashion and music programming, as well as classic series such as 227, Good Times, Martin, Boston Public and It's Showtime at the Apollo. The network primarily owned by Radio One. Radio One, Inc., founded and controlled by Catherine Hughes, it is one of the nation's largest radio broadcasting companies and the largest African American-owned radio broadcasting company in the United States.

Other African American networks scheduled to launch in 2009 are the Black Television News Channel founded by former Congressman J. C. Watts and Better Black Television founded by Percy Miller. In June 2009, NBC News launched a new website named The Grio in partnership with the production team that created the black documentary film, Meeting David Wilson. It is the first African American video news site which focuses on underrepresented stories in existing national news. The Grio consists of a broad spectrum of original video packages, news articles, and contributor blogs on topics including breaking news, politics, health, business, entertainment and Black History.

Education

By 2000, African Americans had advanced greatly. They still lagged overall in education attainment compared to white or Asian Americans, with 14 percent with four year and 5 percent with advanced degrees, though it was higher than for other minorities. African Americans attend college at about half the rate of whites, but at a greater rate than Americans of Hispanic origin. More African American women attend and complete college than men. Black schools for kindergarten through twelfth grade students were common throughout the U.S., and a pattern towards re-segregation is currently occurring across the country.

Historically black colleges and universities remain today which were originally set up when segregated colleges did not admit African Americans. As late as 1947, about one third of African Americans over 65 were considered to lack the literacy to read and write their own names. By 1969, illiteracy as it had been traditionally defined, had been largely eradicated among younger African Americans.

US Census surveys showed that by 1998, 89 percent of African Americans aged 25 to 29 had completed high school, less than whites or Asians, but more than Hispanics. On many college entrance, standardized tests and grades, African Americans have historically lagged behind whites, but some studies suggest that the achievement gap has been closing. Many policy makers have proposed that this gap can and will be eliminated through policies such as affirmative action, desegregation, and multiculturalism.

In Chicago, Marva Collins, an African American educator, created a low cost private school specifically for the purpose of teaching low-income African American children whom the public school system had labeled as being "learning disabled". One article about Marva Collins' school stated,

Working with students having the worst of backgrounds, those who were working far below grade level, and even those who had been labeled as 'unteachable,' Marva was able to overcome the obstacles. News of third grade students reading at ninth grade level, four-year-olds learning to read in only a few months, outstanding test scores, disappearance of behavioral problems, second-graders studying Shakespeare, and other incredible reports, astounded the public.

During the 2006–2007 school year, Collins' school charged $5,500 for tuition, and parents said that the school did a much better job than the Chicago public school system. Meanwhile, during the 2007–2008 year, Chicago public school officials claimed that their budget of $11,300 per student was not enough.

Economic status

Economically, African Americans have benefited from the advances made during the Civil Rights era, particularly among the educated, but not without the lingering effects of historical marginalization when considered as a whole. The racial disparity in poverty rates has narrowed. The black middle class has grown substantially. In 2000, 47% of African Americans owned their homes. The poverty rate among African Americans has decreased from 26.5% in 1998 to 24.7% in 2004. African Americans are the second largest consumer group in America with a combined buying power of over $892 billion currently and likely over $1.1 trillion by 2012. In 2002 African American owned businesses accounted for 1.2 million of the US's 23 million businesses.

In 2004, African American workers had the second-highest median earnings of American minority groups after Asian Americans, and African Americans had the highest level of male-female income parity of all ethnic groups in the United States. Also, among American minority groups, only Asian Americans were more likely to hold white-collar occupations (management, professional, and related fields), and African Americans were no more or less likely than European Americans to work in the service industry. In 2001, over half of African American households of married couples earned $50,000 or more. Although in the same year African Americans were over-represented among the nation's poor, this was directly related to the disproportionate percentage of African American families headed by single women; such families are collectively poorer, regardless of ethnicity.

By 2006, gender continued to be the primary factor in income level, with the median earnings of African American men more than those black and non-black American women overall and in all educational levels. At the same time, among American men, income disparities were significant; the median income of African American men was approximately 76 cents for every dollar of their European American counterparts, although the gap narrowed somewhat with a rise in educational level.

Overall, the median earnings of African American men were 72 cents for every dollar earned of their Asian American counterparts, and $1.17 for every dollar earned by Hispanic men. On the other hand by 2006, among American women with post-secondary education, African American women have made significant advances; the median income of African American women was more than those of their Asian-, European- and Hispanic American counterparts with at least some college education.

African Americans are still underrepresented in government and employment. In 1999, the median income of African American families was $33,255 compared to $53,356 of European Americans. In times of economic hardship for the nation, African Americans suffer disproportionately from job loss and underemployment, with the black underclass being hardest hit. The phrase "last hired and first fired" is reflected in the Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment figures. Nationwide, the October 2008 unemployment rate for African Americans was 11.1%, while the nationwide rate was 6.5%.

The income gap between black and white families is also significant. In 2005, employed blacks earned only 65% of the wages of whites, down from 82% in 1975. ''The New York Times'' reported in 2006 that in Queens, New York, the median income among African American families exceeded that of white families, which the newspaper attributed to the growth in the number of two-parent black families. It noted that Queens was the only county with more than 65,000 residents where that was true.

In 1999, the rate of births to unwed African American mothers was estimated by economist Walter E. Williams of George Mason University to be 70%. The poverty rate among single-parent black families was 39.5% in 2005, according to Williams, while it was 9.9% among married-couple black families. Among white families, the comparable rates were 26.4% and 6%.

According to ''Forbes'' magazine's "wealthiest American" lists, a 2000 net worth of $800 million dollars made Oprah Winfrey the richest African American of the 20th century; by contrast, the net worth of the 20th century's richest American, Bill Gates, who is of European descent, briefly hit $100 billion in 1999. In Forbes' 2007 list, Gates' net worth decreased to $59 billion while Winfrey's increased to $2.5 billion, making her the world's richest black person. Winfrey is also the first African American to make Business Week's annual list of America's 50 greatest philanthropists. BET founder Bob Johnson was also listed as a billionaire prior to an expensive divorce and as of 2009, had an estimated net worth of $550 million. Winfrey remains the only African American wealthy enough to rank among the country's 400 richest people. Some black entrepreneurs use their wealth to create new avenues for both African Americans and new opportunities for American business in general. Examples such as Tyler Perry who created new filming studios in Atlanta, Georgia which makes it possible to film movies and television shows outside of California.

Health

African Americans continue to have lower life expectancies on average than whites in the United States. Even when adjusted for age, African Americans are 1.6 times more likely to die from one of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States than European Americans. However, there is evidence that this may be changing: by 2003, sex had replaced race as the primary factor in life expectancy in the United States, with African American females expected to live longer than European American males born in that year.

In the same year, the gap in life expectancy between American whites (78.0) and blacks (72.8) had decreased to 5.2 years, reflecting a long term trend of this phenomenon. By 2004, "the trend toward convergence in mortality figures across the major race groups also continued", with white–black gap in life expectancy dropping to five years. The current life expectancy of African Americans as a group is comparable to those of other groups who live in countries with a high Human Development Index.

At the same time, the life expectancy gap is affected by collectively lower access to quality medical care. With no system of universal health care, access to medical care in the U.S. generally is mediated by income level and employment status. As a result, African Americans, who have a disproportionate occurrence of poverty and unemployment as a group, are more often uninsured than non Hispanic whites or Asians. For a great many African Americans, healthcare delivery is limited, or nonexistent. And when they receive healthcare, they are more likely than others in the general population to receive substandard, even injurious medical care. African Americans have a higher prevalence of some chronic health conditions.

African Americans are twice as likely to have diabetes, than whites, and twice as likely to die from the disease. Obesity affects 37% of men and 51% of women. This and other factors contribute to hypertension, which affects 40% of all adults. African American men are twice as likely to have diabetes induced end-stage kidney disease, and twice as likely to die of it than white men of the same age. African Americans are 1.7 times more likely to have a stroke and 60% more likely to die from it. Two reasons for poorer health are lack of routine preventative medical care, such as mammograms and colonoscopies and lack of the primary care physcian.

While 1 in 6 Americans (16.2 percent) between the ages of 14 and 49 is infected with herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2), the infection rate is more than three times higher among blacks (39.2 percent) than whites (12.3 percent). The most affected group is black women, with a prevalence rate of 48 percent. Dr. Kevin Fenton, director of the CDC's National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention stated that "high rates of herpes among African-Americans is most likely contributing to the high rate of HIV in that community. In fact, statistics show that people with herpes are two to three times more likely to get HIV if exposed."

African Americans are the American ethnic group most affected by HIV and AIDS, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Black men are six times more likely to have HIV than white men and black women are nearly 18 times more likely to have HIV than white women. A 2004 "CDC analysis of MSM in five cities found that while only 18 percent of the HIV-infected white men were unaware of their infections, 67 percent of the infected black men were unaware."

It has been estimated that "184,991 adult and adolescent HIV infections [were] diagnosed during 2001–2005" (1). More than 51 percent occurred among blacks than any other race. Between the ages of 25–44 years 62 percent were African Americans. Dr. Robert Janssen (2007) states, "We have rates of HIV/AIDS among blacks in some American cities that are as high as in some countries in Africa". The rate for African Americans with HIV/AIDS in Washington, D.C. is 3 percent, based on cases reported. In a New York Times Article, about 50 percent of AIDS-related deaths were African American woman, which accounted for 25 percent of the city's population. In many cases there are a higher proportion of black people being tested than any other racial group. Dr. Janssen goes on by saying "We need to do a better job of encouraging African Americans to test. Studies show that approximately one in five black men between the ages 40 to 49 living in the city is HIV-positive, according to the ''TIMES''. Research indicates that African Americans' sexual behavior is no different than any other racial group. Dr. Janssen says "Racial groups tend to have sex with members of their own racial group.

Crime also plays a significant role in the racial gap in life expectancy. A report from the U.S. Department of Justice states "In 2005, homicide victimization rates for blacks were 6 times higher than the rates for whites" and "94% of black victims were killed by blacks."

Cultural influence in the United States

From their earliest presence in North America, African Americans have contributed literature, art, agricultural skills, foods, clothing styles, music, language, social and technological innovation to American culture. The cultivation and use of many agricultural products in the U.S., such as yams, peanuts, rice, okra, sorghum, grits, watermelon, indigo dyes, and cotton, can be traced to African and African American influences. Notable examples include George Washington Carver, who created 300 products from peanuts, 118 products from sweet potatoes, and 75 from pecans; and George Crum, who invented the potato chip in 1853.

African American music is one of the most pervasive African American cultural influences in the United States today and is among the most dominant in mainstream popular music. Hip hop, R&B;, funk, rock and roll, soul, blues, and other contemporary American musical forms originated in black communities and evolved from other black forms of music, including blues, doo-wop, barbershop, ragtime, bluegrass, jazz, and gospel music.

African American-derived musical forms have also influenced and been incorporated into virtually every other popular musical genre in the world, including country and techno. African American genres are the most important ethnic vernacular tradition in America, as they have developed independent of African traditions from which they arise more so than any other immigrant groups, including Europeans; make up the broadest and longest lasting range of styles in America; and have, historically, been more influential, interculturally, geographically, and economically, than other American vernacular traditions.

African Americans have also had an important role in American dance. Bill T. Jones, a prominent modern choreographer and dancer, has included historical African American themes in his work, particularly in the piece "Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land". Likewise, Alvin Ailey's artistic work, including his "Revelations" based on his experience growing up as an African American in the South during the 1930s, has had a significant influence on modern dance. Another form of dance, Stepping, is an African American tradition whose performance and competition has been formalized through the traditionally black fraternities and sororities at universities.

Many African American authors have written stories, poems, and essays influenced by their experiences as African Americans. African-American literature is a major genre in American literature. Famous examples include Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou.

African American inventors have created many widely used devices in the world and have contributed to international innovation. Norbert Rillieux created the technique for converting sugar cane juice into white sugar crystals. Moreover, Rillieux left Louisiana in 1854 and went to France, where he spent ten years working with the Champollions deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics from the Rosetta Stone. Most slave inventors were nameless, such as the slave owned by the Confederate President Jefferson Davis who designed the ship propeller used by the Confederate navy.

By 1913 over 1,000 inventions were patented by black Americans. Among the most notable inventors were Jan Matzeliger, who developed the first machine to mass-produce shoes, and Elijah McCoy, who invented automatic lubrication devices for steam engines. Granville Woods had 35 patents to improve electric railway systems, including the first system to allow moving trains to communicate. Garrett A. Morgan developed the first automatic traffic signal and gas mask.

Lewis Howard Latimer invented an improvement for the incandescent light bulb. More recent inventors include Frederick McKinley Jones, who invented the movable refrigeration unit for food transport in trucks and trains. Lloyd Quarterman worked with six other black scientists on the creation of the atomic bomb (code named the Manhattan Project.) Quarterman also helped develop the first nuclear reactor, which was used in the atomically powered submarine called the Nautilus.

A few other notable examples include the first successful open heart surgery, performed by Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, and the air conditioner, patented by Frederick McKinley Jones. Dr. Mark Dean holds three of the original nine patents on the computer on which all PCs are based. More current contributors include Otis Boykin, whose inventions included several novel methods for manufacturing electrical components that found use in applications such as guided missile systems and computers, and Colonel Frederick Gregory, who was not only the first black astronaut pilot but the person who redesigned the cockpits for the last three space shuttles. Gregory was also on the team that pioneered the microwave instrumentation landing system.

Political legacy

African Americans have fought in every war in the history of the United States.

The gains made by African Americans in the Civil Rights and Black Power movements not only obtained certain rights for African Americans, but changed American society in far-reaching and fundamentally important ways. Prior to the 1950s, Black Americans in the South were subject to de jure discrimination, or Jim Crow. They would often be the victims of extreme cruelty and violence, sometimes resulting in deaths: by the post WWII era, African Americans became increasingly discontented with their long-standing inequality. In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., African Americans and their supporters challenged the nation to "rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed that all men are created equal ..."

The Civil Rights Movement marked a sea-change in American social, political, economic and civic life. It brought with it boycotts, sit-ins, demonstrations, court battles, bombings and other violence; prompted worldwide media coverage and intense public debate; forged enduring civic, economic and religious alliances; and disrupted and realigned the nation's two major political parties.

Over time, it has changed in fundamental ways the manner in which blacks and whites interact with and relate to one another. The movement resulted in the removal of codified, ''de jure'' racial segregation and discrimination from American life and law, and heavily influenced other groups and movements in struggles for civil rights and social equality within American society, including the Free Speech Movement, the disabled, women, Native Americans, and migrant workers.

The term "African American"

Political overtones

The term African American carries important political overtones. Earlier terms used to identify Americans of African ancestry were conferred upon the group by colonists and Americans of European ancestry. The terms were included in the wording of various laws and legal decisions which some thought were being used as tools of white supremacy and oppression. There developed among blacks in America a growing desire for a term of self-identification of their own choosing.

With the political consciousness that emerged from the political and social ferment of the late 1960s and early 1970s, blacks no longer approved of the term Negro. They believed it had suggestions of a moderate, accommodationist, even "Uncle Tom" connotation. In this period, a growing number of blacks in the United States, particularly African American youth, celebrated their blackness and their historical and cultural ties with the African continent. The Black Power movement defiantly embraced ''Black'' as a group identifier. It was a term social leaders themselves had repudiated only two decades earlier, but they proclaimed, "Black is beautiful".

In this same period, a smaller number of people favored ''Afro-American'', a common shortening (as is 'Anglo-American'). However, after the decline in popularity of the 'Afro' hairstyle in the late 1970s, the term fell out of use.

In the 1980s the term ''African American'' was advanced on the model of, for example, German-American or Irish-American to give descendents of American slaves and other American blacks who lived through the slavery-era a heritage and a cultural base. The term was popularized in black communities around the country via word of mouth and ultimately received mainstream use after Jesse Jackson publicly used the term in front of a national audience. Subsequently, major media outlets adopted its use.

Many blacks in America expressed a preference for the term, as it was formed in the same way as names for others of the many ethnic groups in the nation. Some argued further that, because of the historical circumstances surrounding the capture, enslavement and systematic attempts to de-Africanize blacks in the United States under chattel slavery, most African Americans are unable to trace their ancestry to a specific African nation; hence, the entire continent serves as a geographic marker.

For many, African American is more than a name expressive of cultural and historical roots. The term expresses pride in Africa and a sense of kinship and solidarity with others of the African diaspora—an embrace of pan-Africanism as earlier enunciated by prominent African thinkers such as Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois and George Padmore.

Who is African American?

Since 1977, in an attempt to keep up with changing social opinion, the United States government officially classified black people (revised to ''black'' or ''African American'' in 1997) as "having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa." Other federal offices, such as the United States Census Bureau, adhere to the OMB standards on race in its data collection and tabulations efforts. In preparation for the United States 2010 Census, a marketing and outreach plan, called ''2010 Census Integrated Communications Campaign Plan'' (ICC) recognized and defined African Americans as black people born in the United States. From the ICC perspective, African Americans are one of three groups of black people in the United States

The ICC plan was to reach the three groups by acknowledging that each group has its own sense of community that is based on geography and ethnicity. The best way to market the census process toward any of the three groups is to reach them through their own unique communication channels and not treat the entire black population of the U.S. as though they are all African Americans with a single ethnic and geographical background. The U.S. Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation categorizes black or African American people as "A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa" through racial categories used in the UCR Program adopted from the Statistical Policy Handbook (1978) and published by the Office of Federal Statistical Policy and Standards, U.S. Department of Commerce, derived from the 1977 OMB classification.

The African-American experience

Some black scholars have argued that the term "African-American" should refer strictly to the descendents of West or Central African slaves and free people of color who survived the slavery-era, and not the sons and daughters of black immigrants who lack that ancestry. The argument being that grouping all blacks together regardless of their unique ancestral circumstances would inevitably deny the lingering effects of slavery with in the American slave descendent community, in addition to denying black immigrants recognition of their own unique ancestral backgrounds.

In the book ''The End of Blackness'' published by author Debra Dickerson, she warned against drawing favorable cultural implications from upwardly mobile black immigrants who are not the sons and daughters of American slavery and racial segregation. She used the political rise of President Barack Obama, who is the son of a Kenyan immigrant, a result of "Lumping us all together," Dickerson claimed it, "erases the significance of slavery and continuing racism while giving the appearance of progress." On the liberal website Salon Dickerson wrote, "African-American", in our political and social vocabulary, means those descended from West African slaves". Similar statements have been echoed by Stanley Crouch in a New York Daily News piece, Charles Kenzie Steele, Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and African-American columnist David Ehrenstein of the LA Times who accused white liberals of flocking to blacks who were "Magic Negros", a term that refers to a black person with no past who simply appears to assist the mainstream white (as cultural protagonists/drivers) agenda. Ehrenstein went on to say "He's there to assuage white 'guilt' they feel over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history." said "descendants of slaves did not get much of a head start, and I think you continue to see some of the effects of that." She has also rejected an immigrant designation for African-Americans and instead prefers the term "black" or "white" to denote the African and European U.S. founding populations.

Terms no longer in common use

The terms mulatto and colored were widely used until the second quarter of the 20th century, when they were considered outmoded and generally gave way to the use of ''negro''. By the 1940s, the term commonly was capitalized, but by the mid 1960s, it had acquired negative connotations, though the term ''mulatto'' is still in use in many parts of Latin America and is not considered offensive there. Today, in the culture of the United States, the term is considered inappropriate and is now rarely used and perceived as a pejorative.

The term Negro is largely out of use among the younger black generation, but is still used by a substantial block of older black Americans, particularly in the southern U.S. In Latin America, ''negro'', which translates as ''black'' is the term generally used to refer and describe black people and, similarly to ''mulatto'', it is not considered offensive at all in these regions. However, it is pronounced differently, with the ''e'' being closer to the sound in the English word egg.

See also

Affirmative action

African-American art

African-American history

African-American literature

African-American music

African American Muslims

African American National Biography Project

African American Vernacular English

African American Women, 1960's

American Black Upper Class

American Civil War

Black church

Black feminism

Black Loyalist

Black nationalism

Military history of African Americans

Slavery in the United States

Diaspora:

African Americans in France

African diaspora

African immigrants to the United States

Afro-Latin American

American Black Indians

Americans of Igbo ancestry

Americo-Liberian

Black Hispanic and Latino Americans

Black Nova Scotians

Black people

Foreign-born Afro Americans

Sierra Leone Creole people

Lists:

Lists of African Americans

List of African-American-related topics

List of topics related to Black and African people

Terminology: Colored, Creole peoples, Negro, Nigger, Nigga

Notes

References

Further reading

Jack Salzman, ed., ''Encyclopedia of Afro-American culture and history'', New York, New York : Macmillan Library Reference USA, 1996.

''African American Lives'', edited by Henry L. Gates, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Oxford University Press, 2004—more than 600 biographies.

''From Slavery to Freedom. A History of African Americans'', by John Hope Franklin, Alfred Moss, McGraw-Hill Education 2001, standard work, first edition in 1947.

''Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia'', Darlene Clark Hine (Editor), Rosalyn Terborg-Penn (Editor), Elsa Barkley Brown (Editor), Paperback Edition, Indiana University Press 2005.

External links

Richard Thompson Ford Name Games, ''Slate'', September 16, 2004. Article discussing the problems of defining ''African American''

"Of Arms & the Law: Don Kates on Afro-American Homicide Rates"

''Scientific American'' Magazine (June 2006) Trace Elements Reconnecting African-Americans to an ancestral past

"The Definition of Political Absurdity", ''San Francisco Chronicle'', March 2, 2007

African American archaeology in Sacramento, California pdf

African American archaeology in Oakland, California —See Part III, Chap 10

Black History related original documents and photos

President Obama's Speech to the NAACP on July 16, 2009—full video by ''MSNBC''

Black or African American?, Frank Newport. Gallup, September 28, 2007

The Long Journey of Black Americans - slideshow by ''The First Post''

Category:African American history Category:Ethnic groups in the United States Category:History of civil rights in the United States Category:Peoples of the African diaspora

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Name	Ani DiFranco
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Angela Marie DiFranco
Birth date	September 23, 1970
Birth place	Buffalo, New York
Instrument	Guitar, bass guitar, tenor guitar, vocals, percussion, piano
Genre	Folk rock, indie, alternative
Occupation	Singer-songwriter, musician
Years active	1990–present
Label	Righteous Babe
Website	righteousbabe.com
Past members	}}

Ani DiFranco (; born Angela Maria DiFranco on September 23, 1970) is an American Grammy Award-winning singer, guitarist, poet, and songwriter. She has released more than 20 albums, and is a feminist icon.

Biography

DiFranco was born in Buffalo, New York, to Elizabeth and Dante, who met while they attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She started playing Beatles covers at local bars and busking with her guitar teacher, Michael Meldrum, at the age of nine.

In 1989, DiFranco started her own record company, Righteous Records (renamed Righteous Babe Records in 1994). Prior to the renaming of Righteous Records to Righteous Babe Records, DiFranco worked with manager Dale Anderson, a writer for the ''Buffalo News'', who started another record label called Hot Wings Records after the two parted ways. Hot Wings released the work of Buffalo area female musical performers with styles similar to that of DiFranco. Early releases of her CDs produced prior to 1994 are labeled with the original Righteous Records label. Her self-titled debut album was issued on the label in the winter of 1990. Later, she relocated to New York City, where she took poetry classes at The New School and toured vigorously.

DiFranco identifies herself as bisexual, and has written songs about love and sex with women and men. She addressed the controversy about her sexuality with the song "In or Out". In 1998, she married sound engineer Andrew Gilchrist in a Unitarian Universalist service in Canada, overseen by renowned folk singer Utah Phillips. Numerous media sources reported that her fans felt betrayed by her union with a man. DiFranco and Gilchrist divorced five years later.

In 1998, DiFranco's drummer, Andy Stochansky, left the band to pursue a solo career as a singer-songwriter. Their rapport during live shows is showcased on the 1997 album ''Living in Clip''.

DiFranco's father died early in the summer of 2004. In July 2005, DiFranco developed tendinitis and took a hiatus from touring. DiFranco had toured almost continuously in the preceding fifteen years, only taking brief breaks to record studio albums. Her 2005 tour concluded with an appearance at the FloydFest World Music and Genre Crossover festival in Floyd, Virginia. DiFranco returned to touring in late April 2006, including a performance at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on April 28 and a performance at the renowned Calgary Folk Music Festival on July 30, 2006.

DiFranco gave birth to a daughter, Petah Lucia DiFranco Napolitano, at her Buffalo home on January 20, 2007. The child's father is DiFranco's new husband, Mike Napolitano, the co-producer of DiFranco's 2006 release ''Reprieve.'' Essentially a full-time resident of New Orleans, DiFranco is heavily influenced by the city's post-Katrina plight.

She has continued touring into 2008 with a backing band consisting of Todd Sickafoose on upright bass, Allison Miller on drums, and Mike Dillon on percussion and vibes. DiFranco returned to the Calgary Folk Music Festival in July 2008.

Recognition

On July 21, 2006, DiFranco received the "Woman of Courage Award" at the National Organization for Women (NOW) Conference and Young Feminist Summit in Albany, New York. Past winners have included singer and actress Barbra Streisand and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. DiFranco is one of the first musicians to receive the award, given each year to a woman who has set herself apart by her contributions to the feminist movement.

DiFranco has been toasted by the ''Buffalo News'' as the "Buffalo's leading lady of rock music." The ''News'' further said:

"Through the Righteous Babe Foundation, DiFranco has backed various grassroots cultural and political organizations, supporting causes ranging from abortion rights to gay visibility."

Starting in 2003, DiFranco was nominated four consecutive times for Best Recording Package at the Grammy Awards, one of which she won, in 2004, for ''Evolve''.

Musical style and the "folk" label

DiFranco's guitar playing is often characterized by a signature staccato style, rapid fingerpicking and many alternate tunings. She delivers many of her lines in a speaking style notable for its rhythmic variation. Her lyrics, which often include alliteration, metaphor, word play and a more or less gentle irony, have also received praise for their sophistication.

Although DiFranco's music has been classified as both folk rock and alternative rock, she has reached across genres since her earliest albums. DiFranco has collaborated with a wide range of artists including musician Prince, who recorded two songs with DiFranco in 1999 ("Providence" on her ''To the Teeth'' album, and "I Love U, but I Don't Trust U Anymore" on Prince's ''Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic'' album); folk musician and social activist Utah Phillips (on ''The Past Didn't Go Anywhere'' in 1996 and ''Fellow Workers'' in 1999); funk and soul jazz musician Maceo Parker; and rapper Corey Parker. She has used a variety of instruments and styles: brass instrumentation was prevalent in 1998's ''Little Plastic Castle''; a simple walking bass in her 1997 cover of Hal David and Burt Bacharach's "Wishin' and Hopin'"; strings on the 1997 live album ''Living in Clip'' and 2004's ''Knuckle Down''; and electronics and synthesisers in 1999's ''To the Teeth'' and 2006's ''Reprieve''. Samples from the track "Coming Up" were used by DJ Spooky in his album Live Without Dead Time, produced for AdBusters Magazine in 2003.

DiFranco herself noted that "folk music is not an acoustic guitar – that's not where the heart of it is. I use the word 'folk' in reference to punk music and rap music. It's an attitude, it's an awareness of one's heritage, and it's a community. It's subcorporate music that gives voice to different communities and their struggle against authority."

Lyrics, politics and religion

Although much of DiFranco's material is autobiographical, it is often also strongly political. Many of her songs are concerned with contemporary social issues such as racism, sexism, sexual abuse, homophobia, reproductive rights, poverty, and war. The combination of personal and political is partially responsible for DiFranco's early popularity among politically active college students, particularly those of the left wing, some of whom set up fan pages on the web to document DiFranco's career as early as 1994. DiFranco's rapid rise in popularity in the mid-1990s was fueled mostly by personal contact and word of mouth rather than mainstream media.

DiFranco has expressed political views outside of her music. During the 2000 U.S. presidential election, she actively supported and voted for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. She supported Dennis Kucinich in the 2004 and 2008 Democratic primaries. Kucinich appeared with her at a number of concerts across the country during both primary seasons. DiFranco went on to perform at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Early in her career, DiFranco considered herself an atheist. On the subject of religion, DiFranco has stated:

"Well, I'm not a religious person myself. I'm an atheist. I think religion serves a lot of different purposes in people's lives, and I can recognize the value of that, you know, the value of ceremony, the value of community, or even just having a forum to get together and talk about ideas, about morals – that's a cool concept. But then, of course, institutional religions are so problematic."

Since becoming a mother and releasing her ''Red Letter Year'' album in 2009, DiFranco has talked in concert about "finding religion". At concerts she has stated that her song "The Atom" is an "alternative Christian proposal". In "The Atom" she sings ”Oh holy is the atom/ The truly intelligent design/ To which all of evolution/ Is graciously aligned.” In Reno in 2008 prior to singing "The Atom", she said "I've kind of gotten religion lately, I took a sweet religion, one I am sort of familiar with and sprayed a can of patriarchy-off and this is what I came up with."

Ani has also appeared as herself as part of a new wave of protest music sweeping across America in music documentary Sounds Like a Revolution.

Ani is also a poet and has been featured on Def Jam's poetry hour.

Label independence

Ownership of Righteous Babe Records allows DiFranco a great deal of artistic freedom. For example, on her 2004 album ''Educated Guess'', DiFranco played all of the instruments, provided all of the vocals, and recorded the album by herself at her home on an analog 8-track reel to reel. She was also involved in much of the artwork and design for the packaging. The only other person involved in the record's musical production was Greg Calbi, who mastered it.

References to her independence from major labels appear occasionally in DiFranco's songs, including "The Million You Never Made" (''Not A Pretty Girl''), which discusses the act of turning down a lucrative contract, "The Next Big Thing" (''Not So Soft''), which describes an imagined meeting with a label head-hunter who evaluates the singer based on her looks, and "Napoleon" (''Dilate''), which sympathizes sarcastically with an unnamed friend who did sign with a label.

DiFranco has occasionally joined with Prince in discussing publicly the problems associated with major record companies. Righteous Babe Records employs a number of people in her hometown of Buffalo. In a 1997 open letter to ''Ms. magazine'' she expressed displeasure that what she considers a way to ensure her own artistic freedom was seen by others solely in terms of its financial success.

Recent work

DiFranco should be releasing an album of new material either late in 2011 or early 2012. The album will be entitled "Which Side Are You On." Included on the album could be the following songs: "Promiscuity", "Splinter", "Albacore", "Mariachi", "Unworry", "If You're Not", "Which Side Are You On", "Life Boat", "A New Bible", "Amendment", "Hearse", "See See See See", "Zoo", and "Jay". She will have collobarations with Pete Seeger, Willie Nelson, CC Adcock, Cyril Neville, and many other special guests on the new album.

DiFranco performed a live webcast from Ex'pression College for Digital Arts on June 24, 2010. She debuted a selection of new material, including the songs "Which Side Are You On?" (a reworking of the Florence Reece song with different lyrics penned by DiFranco), "Life Boat", "Unworry", "Promiscuity", "Splinter", "Amendment", "See See..." and "Hearse".

''Red Letter Year'' was released on September 30, 2008. Says DiFranco about the album:

“When I listen to my new record, I hear a very relaxed me, which I think has been absent in a lot of my recorded canon. Now I feel like I’m in a really good place. My partner Mike Napolitano co-produced this record – my guitar and voice have never sounded better, and that’s because of him. I’ve got this great band and crew. And my baby, she teaches me how to just be in my skin, to do less and be more.”

On September 11, 2007, she released the first retrospective of her career, titled ''Canon'' and for the first time, a collection of poetry in a book titled ''Verses''.

DiFranco's album ''Reprieve'' was released on August 8, 2006. It was previously leaked on iTunes for several hours around July 1, 2006, due to an error saying it was released in 2002. DiFranco performed with Cyndi Lauper on "Sisters of Avalon", a track from Lauper's 2005 collection ''The Body Acoustic''.

She also collaborated with fellow folk singer Dar Williams on "Comfortably Numb", a Pink Floyd cover song from Williams' 2005 album, ''My Better Self''.

In 2002 her rendition of Greg Brown's "The Poet Game" appeared on ''Going Driftless: An Artists' Tribute to Greg Brown''.

Lawsuit against Necro

In 2010, DiFranco sued hip-hop horrorcore artist Necro for sampling her song, "Used to You" in a response track called "The Asshole Anthem" on his DIE! album. Due to the lawsuit, the album was reissued without the track.

Discography

Studio albums

1990 – ''Ani DiFranco''

1991 – ''Not So Soft''

1992 – ''Imperfectly''

1993 – ''Puddle Dive''

1994 – ''Out of Range''

1995 – ''Not a Pretty Girl''

1996 – ''Dilate''

1998 – ''Little Plastic Castle''

1999 – ''Up Up Up Up Up Up''

1999 – ''To the Teeth''

2001 – ''Revelling/Reckoning''

2003 – ''Evolve''

2004 – ''Educated Guess''

2005 – ''Knuckle Down''

2006 – ''Reprieve''

2008 – ''Red Letter Year''

Compilations

1993 – ''Like I Said: Songs 1990–91''

2007 – ''Canon''

Live albums

1994 – ''An Acoustic Evening With''

1994 – ''Women in (E)motion'' (German Import)

1997 – ''Living in Clip''

2002 – ''So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter''

2004 – ''Atlanta – 10.9.03'' (Official Bootleg series)

2004 – ''Sacramento – 10.25.03'' (Official Bootleg series)

2004 – ''Portland – 4.7.04'' (Official Bootleg series)

2005 – ''Boston – 11.16.03'' (Official Bootleg series)

2005 – ''Chicago – 1.17.04'' (Official Bootleg series)

2005 – ''Madison – 1.25.04'' (Official Bootleg series)

2005 – ''Rome – 11.15.04'' (Official Bootleg series)

2006 – ''Carnegie Hall – 4.6.02'' (Official Bootleg series – available in stores)

2007 – ''Boston – 11.10.06'' (Official Bootleg series)

2008 – ''Hamburg – 10.18.07'' (Official Bootleg series)

2009 – ''Saratoga, CA – 9.18.06'' (Official Bootleg series)

2009 – ''Chicago – 9.22.07'' (Official Bootleg series)

2010 – ''Live at Bull Moose Music'' (Limited edition)

EPs

1996 – ''More Joy, Less Shame''

1999 – ''Little Plastic Remixes'' (limited distribution)

2000 – ''Swing Set''

Demos

1989 – ''Demo tape'' (unreleased)

Videos

2002 – ''Render: Spanning Time with Ani DiFranco''

2004 – ''Trust''

2008 – ''Live at Babeville''

Poetry

2004 – "Self-evident: poesie e disegni"

2007 – ''Verses''

Other contributions

2004 – ''WFUV: City Folk Live VII'' – "Bliss Like This"

2006 – Jason Karaban – "Doomed to Make Choices"

2008 – ''The City That Care Forgot'' – Contributed backing vocals to the title track of Dr. John's 2008 album.

2009 – Jason Karaban – "Sobriety Kills"

2010 – Anais Mitchell – "Hadestown"

2011 – Twilight Singers – "Blackbird and the Fox"

2011 – Every Mother Counts – "Present/Infant" (Remix)

See also

Righteous Babe Records

:Category:Righteous Babe artists

References

External links

The Righteous Babe homepage

Ani DiFranco at Rolling Stone

Category:1970 births Category:Living people Category:American composers Category:American female singers Category:American folk guitarists Category:American singer-songwriters Category:American female guitarists Category:American folk singers Category:Feminist musicians Category:Anti-corporate activists Category:Bisexual musicians Category:Musicians from New York Category:Righteous Babe artists Category:American buskers Category:People from Buffalo, New York Category:LGBT musicians from the United States Category:LGBT composers Category:LGBT parents Category:Grammy Award winners

ca:Ani DiFranco cs:Ani DiFranco da:Ani DiFranco de:Ani DiFranco es:Ani DiFranco fr:Ani DiFranco hy:Անի Դիֆրանկո it:Ani DiFranco he:אני דיפרנקו csb:Ani DiFranco nl:Ani DiFranco ja:アーニー・ディフランコ pl:Ani DiFranco pt:Ani DiFranco ru:Дифранко, Ани sk:Ani DiFrancová fi:Ani DiFranco sv:Ani DiFranco

name	Vicki Butler-Henderson
birth name	Victoria Butler-Henderson
birth date	February 16, 1972
birth place	Hertfordshire, England
occupation	Racing driverTelevision presenter
years active	Since 1994
spouse	Phil Churchward (2007–present)
website	}}

Victoria "Vicki" Butler-Henderson (born February 16, 1972) is a racing driver and television presenter.

Biography

Butler-Henderson was born into a racing family. Her grandfather used to race a Frazer Nash at Brooklands, her father was in the British karting team and her brother Charlie is a racing driver. She has an older sister, Charlotte, who does not race. Butler-Henderson grew up on the family farm, and was educated at The Perse School for Girls in Cambridge.

Butler-Henderson started racing karts at the age of 12, being overtaken by David Coulthard in her first race. She holds a car race licence as well as a power boat racing licence. After supplementing her income as a racing instructor at Silverstone Circuit, she also undertook a dual career in journalism where she worked on numerous British motoring magazines including ''Auto Express'', ''What Car?'' and ''Performance Car.'' She was the assistant launch editor and mechanic in ''Max Power'' magazine, referred to simply as "VBH."

Media career

In 1997, she joined the BBC's flagship motoring show ''Top Gear''. After the BBC cancelled the original show in 2001, Butler-Henderson, along with co-presenters Quentin Willson and Tiff Needell, moved to Five in 2002 to continue their work on a show now called ''Fifth Gear.'' In 2004, she presented ITV's coverage of the British Touring Car Championship, in which her brother Charlie briefly competed in 2004; and from February 2006 the ten-part series ''Wrecks To Riches'' for Discovery Real Time.

Butler-Henderson has in later years broadened her media career outside racing and cars to become a general presenter. After co-hosting radio shows on Virgin Radio, in 2005, she presented a daytime television show for ITV called ''Date My Daughter'' in which a single man 'dates' three mothers after which they decide if he is worthy enough to date their daughter.

She has recorded voice overs for radio and television advertisements, including Wrigleys Extra Thin Ice and Sony Centres. She also provided a voiceover for the PlayStation 2 game ''Gran Turismo 4 Prologue''. In January 2006, Butler-Henderson appeared in a TV commercial for the Kent & Medway Safety Camera Partnership in which she stated that the Partnership "don't want your cash, they just want you to slow down". Butler-Henderson was also a narrator for National Geographic Channel (UK)'s science documentary entitled "I Didn't Know That". In 2009 she starred in several Dutch commercials for Toyota. She worked at Absolute Radio doing traffic news on the Christian O'Connell Breakfast Show. She left the breakfast show on 9 July 2009. Butler-Henderson has also acted as a celebrity endorser in her career, currently she is the face of ChipsAway, a UK minor automotive paintwork repairer.

Butler-Henderson lent her expert views in the Golden Garages Award, a search for the United Kingdom's best garage run by Motor Codes. Butler-Henderson was part of a professional panel of six independent judges including the Telegraph's Honest John and motoring editor of Which? magazine, Richard Headland. She later presented the prize in person to the winners of the competition, Kinghams of Croydon.

Personal life

Butler-Henderson is married to former ''Fifth Gear'' producer and current ''Top Gear'' series director, Phil Churchward.

Butler-Henderson drives a Mk II Golf GTI, a Honda S2000 and a Ducati Monster 750.

At Autosport International on 15 January 2011, Butler-Henderson's Fifth Gear co-presenter Jason Plato announced that she would not be able to attend as she was having a baby girl.

References

External links

Category:English journalists Category:1972 births Category:English racecar drivers Category:English television presenters Category:Female racecar drivers Category:People from Hertfordshire Category:Top Gear Category:Living people Category:People educated at the Perse School for Girls

de:Vicki Butler-Henderson