But I think that a lot of Americans would identify on some level with the colonial power in the UK/India example, rather than the colonized.

Yes! I think you really hit it there. I noticed that when the discussion went to white-colonizer/POC-colonized countries, the tone of the discussion shifted so that it sounded like most of the people were coming at it from the point of view of the colonizer. I suspect if you actually outright asked, people would try and identify more with the colonized, but the automatic reaction did seem to be identification along broader racial and cultural lines.

Huh.