Politics & Power Quote by Anthony J. D'Angelo

“Transcend political correctness and strive for human righteousness” is engineered as a clean, morally charged pivot: stop policing language, start policing the self. D’Angelo sets up “political correctness” as a small, fussy target - the kind of social compliance that can feel performative, brittle, and driven by fear of public shaming. Then he vaults past it to “human righteousness,” a phrase that sounds older and heavier, closer to conscience than etiquette. The move is rhetorical judo: he borrows the audience’s fatigue with culture-war etiquette and redirects it toward a higher standard.

The subtext is double-edged. On the generous reading, it’s a warning against mistaking surface decency for actual decency - the way someone can master the approved vocabulary while staying cruel, exploitative, or indifferent. “Transcend” suggests that sensitivity norms aren’t evil; they’re just insufficient. Righteousness, in this framing, is not about being correct but being accountable, especially when no one is scoring you.

On the more suspicious reading, the line can be a permission slip. “Political correctness” has long been a shorthand weapon used to dismiss marginalized people’s complaints as mere language games. Pairing it with “righteousness” risks smuggling in a private moral code - one that can ignore real harms while claiming moral superiority.

Context matters: coming from a self-help/leadership author, it fits the genre’s preference for interior virtue over public conflict. It’s a call to character, but also a bid to escape the messiness of politics by rebranding it as morality.