The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations: When Helping Holds People Back
This week, I attended the 2025 Opioids, Stimulants, and Trauma Summit, and one of the speakers - Nodaway Benaise (Mark Denning) - used the phrase "the soft bigotry of low expectations." It stopped me in my tracks - not because the concept was unfamiliar, but because it finally had a name.
It’s that quiet, subtle form of bias where we assume someone isn’t capable - not out of cruelty, but out of misguided kindness. It’s disenfranchisement disguised as support. It’s what happens when we decide someone has been through too much, so we stop expecting much from them at all.
I see it everywhere - in how people treat those who use drugs, folks in recovery, and even teenagers. I see it in the way some clinicians, doctors, and teachers engage with those they’re meant to help. Unfortunately, I’ve even seen it in peer spaces. And if I’m really honest, I’ve done it myself a time or two.
The thing is, harm doesn’t always come from loud, aggressive stigma or discrimination. Sometimes it slips in quietly - through all the tiny decisions made "for someone’s own good" - and slowly strips people of opportunity, confidence, and dignity.
This isn’t the same as enabling. Enabling shields people from the consequences of harmful behavior, often to avoid conflict. What we’re talking about here is shielding people from opportunity, limiting their growth, autonomy, or self-trust under the guise of care.
Let me give you a few examples…
“How Do I Even Make an Appointment?”
Many of the teens I’ve worked with have been given diagnoses like depression or anxiety, and they tend to carry around plenty of other labels slapped on them by others - lazy, neurotic, unmotivated, scatterbrained. But the side of them I get to see is often thoughtful, funny, and terrified of making mistakes. As they approach 18, many of them grow anxious about all the "adult stuff" they’re about to be responsible for.
I remember one of them asking me, completely sincerely and through tears, "How do I even make an appointment to come see you after I turn 18? My mom does it. I don’t even know what your website is or how much this costs. Do you, like, take cash?"
They weren’t lazy or unmotivated - quite the opposite. They just didn’t know how because the adults around them had always done it for them without including them in the process. I don’t believe it was meant to be controlling. I think the intention was, "Let me show you I care by taking care of this for you." But the message received was, "You’re not capable of handling this - just let me do it."
Somewhere along the way, that helpfulness created helplessness.
And here’s the thing: they see adults doing it all the time - calling clinics, making appointments, navigating systems - and they assume every adult just magically knew how. So when they don’t, they think something must be wrong with them. They start to believe they’re not ready, not capable, not enough. What was meant to be protective becomes paralyzing. Instead of building confidence, we build anxiety. And worse, instead of showing love, we show that we don’t believe in them.
The soft bigotry here is in the idea that they weren’t ready, or that struggling meant they couldn’t learn. But they can learn. And more often than we think, they are ready - even if it’s just to take a baby step or two. What they need, what most of us need, is someone to sit beside us, not jump in front of us at every turn.
When we don’t offer those opportunities, we don’t just delay learning - we risk locking people out of it entirely. Every adult task they miss becomes another reason to believe they’re not capable. That belief sticks. And it will show up over and over again.
The Recovery Bubble
Early in someone’s recovery, there’s often a lot of caution - and for good reason. Stability is precious.
But more times than I care to count, I’ve watched that caution quietly morph into something limiting. Instead of being given a safety net, people are given a barbed-wire fence. It keeps them from exploring what they’re capable of - and it hurts.
Many of us in peer work can share a story that looks something like this: A peer expresses that, as part of their vision of recovery, they want to get a job. They’re excited, hopeful, maybe nervous, but they want something meaningful and productive to fill their time. A job can be a path toward stability, structure, and income. But when they bring it up to their case manager or parent, the response is often immediate: "Let’s hold off for now. That might be too much for you right now."
The intention is care. The impact is a message: "We don’t think you can handle responsibility. You’re too fragile." Or even worse, "You have nothing to contribute."
This is where that soft bigotry sneaks in. Instead of asking, "What would support look like if you took this step?" we default to protection. We assume challenge equals danger. Growth equals risk. And we miss the fact that autonomy itself can be a vital part of recovery.
When we keep expectations low, we build support programs that don’t ask or allow people to stretch.
Over time, we reinforce the idea that stability means ease, which isn’t how the real world works.
If you believe that, though, when life does get hard (as it inevitably will), you start to question yourself. You begin to believe your recovery is in jeopardy simply because life isn’t smooth. That bump in the road becomes a threat that could send you into relapse. That kind of fear keeps your recovery fragile and reactive. Your progress becomes dependent on others, on external stability, on the weather of the world around you.
But the goal of recovery is never to avoid all challenge. It’s to know you can face it. It’s about trusting you have the tools, support, and confidence to get through hard things - even if it sucks.
Resilience doesn’t come from being shielded from life. It comes from living it.
Just like the teen who thinks they’re not ready for adulthood, many people in recovery think they’re failing simply because they feel challenged. But struggle isn’t a sign you’re doing it wrong - it’s a sign you’re in it. Growth is supposed to be uncomfortable.
If we want people to heal, we can’t just support them in surviving. We have to believe in their capacity to rebuild.
Not Everyone in Recovery Needs a Bus Pass
There’s a common assumption, even if subconscious, in social services that if someone is using drugs - or has used drugs, is in recovery, etc. - they must need help with the basics: bus passes, hygiene kits, basic job skills, food.
And yes, sometimes those resources are helpful. For many, they’re vital.
But the fact that this is often the system’s - and people’s - default response to offering support says a lot.
I’ve worked with people who’ve used drugs and still managed to save lives for a living, own businesses, raise healthy children, and hold advanced degrees. Some are running nonprofits, sitting in elected positions, mentoring or leading others.
Mental health challenges or substance use doesn’t always mean someone is barely surviving.
Using drugs or living with depression doesn’t automatically mean someone lacks life skills or can’t meet their own basic needs.
And here’s the thing: many of the people who eventually do meet the criteria for social services - the ones who become eligible for housing programs, Medicaid, or reentry support - are people who once held steady jobs, earned degrees, paid bills on time, filed their taxes, etc.
This isn’t a rare story. It comes up all the time - even in our work inside the jail.
When we design services as if every person who uses drugs is unhoused or destitute, we reinforce a stereotype that creates real harm for everyone involved.
It doesn’t just reduce people who need basic supports to caricatures of "poor choices." It also keeps people out of recovery by limiting the kinds of support available, and the dignity with which it’s offered.
If we only show one version of what it looks like to need help - the made-for-TV version of "rock bottom" - then anyone who doesn’t match it is left to wonder if they deserve help at all. If you don’t qualify for services, the message is you must be fine - or worse, you're better than those who do.
Some programs unintentionally reinforce the idea that if you’re still holding down a job or keeping up appearances, you don’t need - or deserve - support.
Because of this, many people literally can’t access help. Government and social service programs are often income-based. Most insurance doesn’t cover meaningful clinical care, let alone peer or community-based support. So if you’re not poor "enough," sick "enough," or visibly struggling, you fall through the cracks - at least until you are and then you become a “problem” for someone.
At that point, the stigma shifts: now it’s your fault. Now you’re not just struggling, you’re dependent. Broken. A burden.
The soft bigotry here isn’t just in assuming people have nothing. It’s in building systems that only recognize one kind of suffering and ignore all the others. It’s a mindset that sees someone’s current condition - their recovery status, for example - and makes sweeping assumptions about who they are. It doesn’t honor their life or experience before the struggle. And it lowers all expectations to zero.
And that, my friend, is brutal.
What to Do Instead
This isn’t about stepping back. It’s about stepping up differently.
Doing better starts with shifting our mindset - from assuming people need saving, to recognizing that most people need to be seen, heard, and trusted.
Instead of offering cookie-cutter support based on stereotypes or worst-case scenarios, we can start by leading with curiosity. Ask: "What do you want?" or "What would be helpful right now?"
We also need to separate support from crisis. Needing help shouldn’t require someone's life coming completely apart first. Most programs are only available once someone meets very specific thresholds - poverty, housing insecurity, unemployment - but people deserve care before they ever get close to those situations. Recovery spaces, treatment, and wraparound support should be accessible at all points in someone’s journey.
We have to build programs that reflect the real diversity of experience. People who use drugs or live with mental health challenges are not a monolith. Some are parents. Some are business owners. Some live in big houses, drive fancy cars, or get called things like, Officer, Doctor or Your Honor. Some are quietly holding it together. And regardless of what anyone’s story is or what boxes they do/don’t check - they deserve support too.
We need to reframe what success looks like. It’s not just sobriety, housing, or job placement. It's not a perfect life with no adversity.
It’s self-trust.
It’s allowing people to feel capable and powerful in their own lives again.
Support should empower people to stretch, grow, and make decisions - not keep them small in the name of safety.
People don’t thrive by being protected from challenge. They grow when someone believes they can face it - and they thrive when they start believing it themselves.
What it really comes down to is this:
People don’t need pity. They need partnership.
They don’t need saving. They need someone who believes in them - and who will sit with them, listen to them, and walk beside them - not in front of them.
If we want to do better, we have to trade the soft bigotry of low expectations for the radical belief that people are capable of rising, rebuilding, and recovering on their terms.
