and do you think Japanese people would also laugh?

Yes. If they had a sense of humour and don't take themselves too seriously.
Of course, if it were ment to offend or was done obnoxiously, that's a different matter, but it's all in the intent.

Volgadon - where I've used imperialism I mean acquiring empire by conquest. And, as for the rest, I've said before - given all that imperialism and economic/capitalist immigration/emigration obviously has occured, WHAT IS BEST FROM NOW ON...

It's just that you use it so randomnly, one is never quite sure. Wav is the Ron Burgundy of political philosophy.

How is declaring that certain music should only be played by certain races NOT racist?

What do you think about the Nigunei Meron info?

Wav, if you are part of the Manchester family, which I highly doubt, then your ancestors definitely WERE capitalist immigrants.
http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:Vew1m9flbfcJ:www.msim.org.uk/media/33871455/thefranksfamily.pdf+jewish+franks+manchester&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7
In the which case, shouldn't you lead the way (leading by example is the best way forward) and repatriate yourself to the Netherlands?

so all the talk from our elders of better community spirit, being able to leave their front door open without fear, etc., is nonsense?

Take a look at this!!
www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~zierke/martin.carthy/songs/johnblunt.html

Here is another interesting story.
I guess society suffered because those poor, benighted villagers stopped practising their own good culture.

"The following, perhaps related story, was told to me 40 years ago by a famous musicologist whose son was a musico-ethnologist. The son attended a conference where one of the more exciting papers was given by a man who had succeeded in reaching an isolated South American Indian tribe, never before visited by white men with a battery operated tape recorder and recorded their music. When he played the tape, one of the audience caused a disturbance by jumping up and shouting, 'Those are Polish Jewish Hassidic melodies.'

The story becomes more interesting when the researcher presented a paper a few years later in apology. The new story, prompted by the reference to Hassidic melodies, was as follows. One of the older Indians remembered that some 60 years earlier a peddler had come to the village and was trapped there for a long time, more than a month, perhaps even as long as two. At that time, as they warmed themselves, taking shelter from the rain, he would sing to them and teach them his songs."
Robert Werman,