Please, people. We're Americans.

I am an immigrant.

Although I’m white, speak English as a first language, am educated and have independent resources, there is no question that I am an immigrant – with all of the baggage that label carries. This is hard to realize, let alone admit. The hallmarks of an immigrant, if you watch Fox News, are brown skin, many babies, a thick accent, meagre resources, manual labour and an existence on the margins of society – both literally and symbolically. That’s not me.

The truth is that I believed that, unless I opened my mouth, I could pass as a native. I’ve existed for a month and a half secure that I had pulled off the deception, compounded by the fact that I’ve successfully integrated key words and phrases (“bits” instead of “parts,” “gobsmacked” instead of “stunned,” “would you be happy to” instead of “would you mind,” “brilliant” instead of “great”) into my American grammar, and worn the same outfit twice in two weeks and only three different pairs of shoes. These cosmetic changes have allowed me to be fairly self-congratulatory about my assimilation.

But I’m still an immigrant.

It is, however, a markedly different kind of status than, say, newly-arrived Mexican or Southeast Asian people experience in the US. Those immigrants are systematically disempowered, despite terrific efforts to adapt to middle-class standards. Instead, as an American in Britain, you represent a country that has become powerful by doing some nasty things and, as penance, you must sit quietly while others complain about you. To your face. The alternative is to become complicit in these acts.

So in some ways, you’re an immigrant who has too much power. It’s ironic . . . I’m thinking about this as a new version of Gulliver’s Travels is about to be released. Suffice it to say that I’m Gulliver.

This is not to say that the people we’ve met aren’t lovely. They are, and don’t consciously hold me accountable for my countrymen’s foibles. But I’ve sat in many meetings where colleagues snickeringly reference some aspect of fundraising – or life in general, really – as “so very American.” Or they’ll make a reference to an American turn of phrase, laugh uproariously, and say, “Please. Not here. We’re British.” And usually I can’t even understand the joke. For example, what’s wrong with the word “gotten”? Yet I laugh to prove that I’m the American who understands my flaws.

In general, while these jokes hurt, I don’t entirely mind. I frequently disagree with American politics or behaviors myself, and have made conscious efforts to differentiate myself in the past.

But we’re talking about Britain here, not Cambodia. Britain, the empire on which the sun never set. MY country, though a little backward, didn’t invent slave-trading. MY country didn’t colonize thousands upon thousands of indigenous people around the world. MY country has never beheaded politicians or burned martyrs. So while I’m sorry about KFC and Britney Spears, I think we need some perspective on relative evils perpetrated by our countries.

Until then, I’ll try to fit the word “posh” into my vocabulary and use the letter s when I really mean z. I’ll work to accommodate my status as the powerful yet wayward “other.” And I’ll hope that America’s new face – international, tolerant, compassionate – can represent to the world something other than a military-industrial complex. Please, people. We’re Americans.