The second edition of a report using data to measure equality in Tulsa shows a little progress has been made.
The Equality Indicators use 54 measures of economic opportunity, education, housing, justice, public health and services to calculate a score on a 100-point scale, where 100 means total equality. Tulsa’s score went from 40.02 last year to 41.74 this year.
"We see an improvement in our overall score year over year, and so that’s good news. Now, is it as much of an improvement as I’d like to see us make? No," said Mayor G.T. Bynum.
Tulsa saw scores decline slightly in half the categories, including justice, which covers policing issues. The score showing racial disparity in use of force, however, improved.
Data used in the 2018 Equality Indicators report showed black Tulsans were more than five times as likely to have police use force against them than Latinos, the group with the lowest rate. In the 2019 report, the disparity fell to three times as likely.
Bynum said there were some great strides on individual indicators: Veterans’ risk of homelessness is now in line with the rest of Tulsa, and more students of color are taking advanced placement courses.
A challenge is increasing the rapidly growing Latino community’s representation within the Tulsa Police Department.
"The average age of our Hispanic community here in Tulsa’s around 15 years old, and so we just don’t have the age base in the population to be recruiting as many people as we would like from the community," Bynum said.
Eight indicators have changed in this year's Equality Indicators report. Race and low birthweight has been replaced by race and preterm births, for example.
"Primarily because we found indicators that would be better proxies for overall inequality in Tulsa based on advice from subject-matter experts or feedback from the community," said Community Service Council Director of Innovative Data and Research Melanie Poulter.
Data in the Equality Indicators come from sources such as the U.S. Census Bureau or Oklahoma State Department of Health. The most recent available data is used in each report.
Scores are generally calculated by comparing the most and least disadvantaged groups for a given indicator. While black Tulsans are the most disadvantaged group for the greatest number of indicators, the Equality Indicators also consider disparities based on age, gender, geographic location, income, disability, veteran status and other categories.
