When Inclusion Comes Last, Everyone Loses

Whose Comfort is Default?

In recent months/weeks/days/hours, debates over who “deserves” to be part of this country or to access basic benefits like healthcare or citizenship have dominated headlines. From proposals to limit birthright citizenship to calls for slashing safety nets like Medicaid, these discussions often reveal a dangerous truth: many of our leaders make decisions based on whose lives, bodies, and futures they deem valuable.

Yet countless people working in the U.S. today live at the intersection of these debates. Policies that strip away healthcare, threaten immigration status, or redefine who is “deserving” do not exist in a vacuum; they ripple into workplaces, shaping who can participate fully and safely in the economy.

These contradictions show up everywhere:

• A country built on immigrant labor now questions the legitimacy of immigrants’ children being citizens.

• Companies praised diversity while staying silent about policies that target the very communities they claim to support.

• Workers are expected to juggle caregiving, health crises, or legal vulnerability without systemic support from employers or policymakers.

This is the blueprint of our systems. And when inclusion is treated as an afterthought, a retrofit rather than a design principle, it reinforces the very exclusion it claims to address.

Exclusion as a design principle is the disease. Inclusion as an add-on is the symptom.

What If Inclusion Was the Starting Point?

We have to stop tinkering at the edges.We have to stop “accommodating” after the fact. We have to stop asking marginalized people to navigate systems built without them.

Inclusion isn’t a kindness. It’s a power shift.

If inclusion were the default, here’s what would happen:

🔸 Policy wouldn’t just prohibit discrimination; it would dismantle the assumptions enabling it.Example: Parental leave policies designed with all family structures in mind, not just heteronormative, nuclear families.

🔸 Processes would interrogate power at every step.Example: Hiring committees evaluated for racial, gender, and disability representation (you don't have to possess the traits, but you better know how to represent them), not “diverse” panels where one person is tokenized.

🔸 Language wouldn’t be sanitized neutrality; it would be intentional solidarity.Example: Shifting from “diversity candidates” to “equity-centered hiring.” From “non-white” to naming specific identities.

🔸 Access would be non-negotiable.Example: Accessibility baked into design budgets, timelines, and accountability structures - not waiting for someone to request an automatic door, lactation room, or an all gender bathroom.

Inclusion at the design level changes who systems serve, who systems center, and who systems harm.

Operationalizing Equity: It’s Not Charity. It’s Strategy.

I work with leaders who say, “We’re committed to inclusion.” But when I ask, “Where is inclusion built into your operations?” they point to trainings, affinity groups, mentoring programs.

All good, but none structural within business operations.

If your hiring pipeline still screens for degrees that systematically exclude first-generation students…If your promotion criteria reward face time over results, disadvantaging caregivers…If your “leadership potential” metrics privilege dominant communication styles…

You’re not operationalizing equity. You’re hosting DEI-themed events inside inequitable infrastructure.

Equity means making visible the invisible defaults:Whose bodies fit your furniture? Whose languages show up in your comms? Whose norms shape your “professionalism” standards?

Every policy, process, and practice was designed by someone, for someone. The question is: who? And are you willing to redesign for more?

Action Is the Only Accountability

This moment demands bold, structural shifts:

🔥 Audit one system in your organization this month. Not for just “diversity numbers,” but for exclusion by design. Ask: who is systemically disadvantaged by how this operates? Who benefits?

🔥 Move resources. Inclusion without redistribution is empty. Allocate budget, authority, and decision-making power to historically excluded groups.

🔥 Build in accountability mechanisms. If no one’s job performance is tied to equity outcomes, it won’t happen. Period.

About the Author

Tenea Watson Nelson, PhD, is an equity strategist and founder of Watson Nelson Consulting. She partners with organizations ready to move beyond surface-level actions toward systems-level redesign, embedding equity into the core of their operations.

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