Interracial intimacy is a multicultural relationship that can go beyond sex. It can be a friendship and can be the closeness between interracial families. Interracial intimacy started during colonization, and became more prevalent during slavery. Interracial intimacy during slavery involved rape for pleasure and profit of the whites. It was a patriarchal arrangement. The trauma of the rape carries over into the interracial dating today.  

Interracial intimacy is not always a pleasant experience as is evident from the actions of colonization and slavery. Even today, boundaries are crossed over in interracial relations. In relationships between whites and blacks, prejudices and biases still fuel fear and influence our sexual, marital, and family choices. Laws during the 1900s prevented the marriage and dating between white and black people. Government policing of interracial dating is not as prevalent as before yet even now racial mixing is being regulated. In his book Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption, Randall Kennedy speaks on how the injustices of the slavery era fuel present-day battles over race in adoption policies which seek to pair children with adults of the same race. This kind of calculated thinking is harmful to black men and women because it furthers a racist mindset because of the fetishization of mixed races and having mixed children. White people, men in particular, due to their racist ancestry develop an obsession with black skin and black stereotypes, seeking out black women for their voluptuous bodies and natural hair. White women also perpetuate these racist tendencies when they seek black men for their “sexual advantages” or dating black men to anger their family members who would not approve. Even in an interracial friendship racism exists For example, the white friend wants to have black friends because they’re “hip and cool”, and so they can say nigger because they have black friends. The boundaries of curiosity, also, must be established in an interracial friendship, Solange expresses this perfectly in her song “Don’t Touch My Hair.”  The questions about black hair become harmful when hands get involved. This is a problem in interracial friendships because white people feel entitled to touch and play with black hair like a doll's hair. This racist antic is practiced by white people and people of other races.