Arising Black American intellectuals could channel expansionist influence into Africa.

Evidence

One further phenomenon in the United States is worth studying, and that is the formation of a surprising number of negro intellectuals who absorb American culture and technology. It is worth bearing in mind the indirect influence that these negro intellectuals could exercise on the backward masses in Africa, and indeed direct influence if one or other of these hypotheses were ever to be verified: 1. that American expansionism should use American negroes as its agents in the conquest of the African market and the extension of American civilisation (something of the kind has already happened, but I don’t know to what extent); 2. that the struggle for the unification of the American people should intensify in such a way as to provoke a negro exodus and the return to Africa of the most independent and energetic intellectual elements, the ones, in other words, who would be least inclined to submit to some possible future legislation that was even more humiliating than are the present widespread social customs. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 315

It is worth bearing in mind the indirect influence that these negro intellectuals could exercise on the backward masses in Africa, and indeed direct influence if one or other of these hypotheses were ever to be verified: 1. that American expansionism should use American negroes as its agents in the conquest of the African market and the extension of American civilisation (something of the kind has already happened, but I don’t know to what extent); 2. that the struggle for the unification of the American people should intensify in such a way as to provoke a negro exodus and the return to Africa of the most independent and energetic intellectual elements, the ones, in other words, who would be least inclined to submit to some possible future legislation that was even more humiliating than are the present widespread social customs. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 315

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s toolkit on colonial psychology and how colonized/intellectual intermediaries mediate empire — parallels later Islamophobia readings on native informants.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how did Gramsci’s speculation compare to actual Marcus Garvey / back-to-Africa movements?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 315