Change American keyboard icon in menu bar to black and white

If you mean the American flag that appears, then go to the "Input Sources" of the Language & Text system preferences and uncheck all but one of the input keyboard layouts. If you have multiple layouts selected then the flag associated with the current one will be displayed in the menu, but if not then only the black and white "input menu" icon will be used.

GaryKing wrote:

For most other languages, at least the ones that I use, their icons are shown in black and white (since they use the standard icon rather than a country's flag).

Could you give some examples of these black/white keyboards? Apple's are almost all in color.

Anyway, to have US as black/white, you can generate a duplicate layout either without any .icns file or with a custom black/white .icns file using

http://scripts.sil.org/ukelele

PS You can get a black/white .icns file at

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/46870715/k/U.S.%20copy.icns