Serious question: Is not presenting furries and orcs as standard PC races uninclusive?
This question could be rephrased as "is not including animal-folk races keeping people out of the game?" or, slightly differently "Is not including these races making players feel unwelcome?"
For the first version: I think this is yes in an absolute sense of at least one person decided not to play the game because they thought couldn't be a fox-person. But there's a higher threshold than that. I think more race options helps more players enjoy the game the way they want to, and if you can do so in a balanced way that's broadly a good thing. It also helps bring in new players if they have an easier time finding something that they think will be fun to play. Plus, in at least one other highly popular fantasy game, orcs were a core pc race so having orcs but not letting you play them seems odd. Especially when half-orc and dragonborn both make the cut.
But the drive to include as many character options
must be weighed against the drive to have games feel coherent, and thematic coherence means not all conceptually possible character options will fit. I've never been in a game where a mind flayer pc would be acceptable, not because mind flayer pc's can't be balanced but because the setting has never allowed for it. Some of this is just good table ettiquette and a solid session zero, but the books can be written to promote these things, and they can be written in ways the work against it.
But the context of this balance, at least ofr this thread, is Dungeons & Dragons as a game overall, not your personal campaign. We should exclude a race when it won't work in any DnD, not when it won't work in my game. So there should probably be a way to play as a mind flayer pc if it works in the specific campaign you're joining (and it's not hard to imagine such a game).
On the fourth hand, there's only so many pages in the book, so at some point we have to distinguish between "central and important to present", "allowed" and "not cool, bro."
For the second version, (are people being made to feel unwelcome) with respect to orcs: I'm not seeing the complaint phrased that way, as in it's not the status of them being pc's or not that's the real issue. Some people feel that the descriptions of orc (fluff and crunch) tracks a little too close to how real-world racists talk about certain peoples. This is a bad thing, and something we should question and adjust to account for. Thinking of orcs as playable is a good way to reconsider it, even if in the end they aren't included as a core playable race. Which is why stuff like racial intelligence mods and getting rid of mandatory alignment for non-outsiders tend to go over without much knee-jerking. Strength mods are a little tougher because the mechanical range is so small compared to the breadth we'd expect in the real world, let alone when magic is involved.
With respect to furries: I would say probably not in the sense of the game making them feel unwelcome so much as the community making them feel unwelcome. It's not even that you can't play a fox-person, really (lots of good refluffing and homebrew options exist), it's much more likely that the hostile reaction you'll get from other players is what's making you walk away.
Which leads to another path of questioning that I'm not ready to dive into just yet.
