Out of interest, why don't you capitalize "American"?
Edit: I'm genuinely curious and not asking to annoy anyone; I might be misunderstanding grammar rules or rules of HN. I ask because I'm not sure this was a mistake; all over the web I see people who write with good grammar, but never capitalize "American". Is it considered rude to capitalize "American"?
For what it's worth, it should be capitalized but I suspect Americans don't formally discuss themselves in the third person enough to have that grammar rule down.
I don't know about OP, but in some languages(Polish for example) you capitalize proper nouns(so you would capitalize America) but not adjectives(so American or Polish or German would never be capitalized) - so it could be just a cross-language mistake.
Edit: I'm genuinely curious and not asking to annoy anyone; I might be misunderstanding grammar rules or rules of HN. I ask because I'm not sure this was a mistake; all over the web I see people who write with good grammar, but never capitalize "American". Is it considered rude to capitalize "American"?