Becheesed

From Dutch "verkaased"

"kaas" is a doughey, soft, often pourous, fattening, somewhat bland edible substance known in English as "cheese". It is also synonymous with Holland, as Dutch people are known sometimes by the racial slur "kaas-kop" (cheese-head).

Therefore, cheese has come to stand for everything it is to be Dutch. Someone who has been "becheesed", is usually some minority - preferably with brown skin - who is thought to have become completely Dutch, or depending on your perspective, this person may have abandoned their own culture. You know, they speak with a hard "G", they watch ice-skating, and they put mayo on everything. Verkaasd does not have a fixed point. I guess if you extend the metaphor, some people like old cheese, and some prefer younger, softer cheeses like brie. Verkaasd also does not necessarily have a value judgement of good or bad.

Racial integration is a very big issue in almost every country, so it is odd that there is no Engglish word for this. Of course, it would be possible to replace "cheese" with a word that is more appropriate to other countries. Minorities in the US might be "be-hot-dogged", immigrants in Australia cound be "be-barbied", and minorities in England might be "be-tea-bagged". But they all sound like these might be vaguely sexual terms, and it doesn't have the same imagery of a soft, white substance that cheese does. Sometimes, someone who has been becheesed might also be called an "oreo" because it is brown on the outside and white on the inside (although an oreo also refers to a specific type of Ménage à trois)The issue of becheesing has been particularly relevant in the last two years with the question of "is Obama black enough?" Even more recently, an important guy (soorry for the technical language) got into a kerfuffle for noting that Obama spoke without a "negro dialect".

Example Sentence (because people seem to learn things best when all the information is all compressed into a one-word slogan)
Bonus 1: The legend that is George Carlin shows that this was an issue well before Obama, and came very close to providing an English definition in this part of his stand-up, referring to becheesed black people as "openly white".



Bonus 2: The (terrible) movie Undercover Brother shows how the typical becheesing process works