Even though many Jews in the Second World War were betrayed to the Gestapo by their neighbors, most of us agree that if people from different ethnic groups know each other well, their chance of conflict diminishes considerably.

Indeed, talking to each other, understanding each other’s point of view and the reasons for our behavior, act to buffer against animosity and other noxious reactions ignorance of each other begets.

America’s race problems will be healed when more of us get to know each other; when more of us extend a hand of friendship to people not like us. It is the way to end Sunday morning’s most segregated hour in Christian America.

I am a member of a group of five friends. We call ourselves “us” — a nice abbreviation of our different, distinctive names. For over a decade, the three white and two Black men have met for lunch. From time to time our spouses witness our subversive male argumentation.

It all began when two white physicians and myself — joined by our love of literature, philosophy, universal health care and enjoyment of a good conversation — met for lunch each month.

A few years later a retired Black diplomat and a white businessman joined us. We form an eclectic group joined by our sense of humor. Discussion and debate of any issue under the sun is fun when you have a sense of irony. Certainly over the years we have argued, agreed and disagreed over many thorny subjects.

The result has always been an understanding of what the argument is and what the conclusion of the matter was. I regard this as the best way to learn about the life of others and their world — seeing the world through another’s eyes.

We discuss literature and politics and how our country is governed or misgoverned. We are honest about the knowledge deficits we each have about different matters. I can say that over this time I am a better informed man. I have learned an awful lot about the souls of Black Americans that I, an African-born Black man, had no authentic comprehension of. Much of what I found new and intriguing about Black America was also unknown to our white colleagues — despite living all their lives in America, alongside Black people.

People can have different opinions about this or that, with the understanding that everything should be subject to discussion and analysis. One seeks the truth, that depends on a corresponding fact. Lack of a corresponding fact, as Bertrand Russell says, is falsehood. Many moments of our doubt were resolved by consulting the source of all-known world’s knowledge — books.

That we are friends is not unique, for rare is the human who has no friends. What is different is the friends most people have are drawn from their own ethnic group.

Few of us allow ourselves to know people of other ethnic, religious, color groups. Friendships across “race lines” are an exception.

In fact most Americans have never had a friend of another race. And for me, rare was the white physician who befriended me over my four decades in Colorado. Their friendships were based on country club membership; med schools attended, synagogues that families attend — institutions that hold America divided into “us and them.” To most of my white colleagues I was like a foreign body.

We knew where we stood; there were no illusions.

I therefore celebrate these friends: for their humanity; their appreciation of other peoples’ humanity; for being seekers of other points of view.

The wealth our companionship bestows us, I believe, is a result of our acknowledgment of the richness of our unique and varied origins. I believe that it is this wealth that America must seek if it stands a chance to wash away the soot of racial prejudice that covers its soul and heart.

Walking down my life’s road I remember Polonius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet saying, “Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.”

Pius Kamau, M.D., general surgery, is president of the Aurora-based Africa America Higher Education Partnerships; co-founder of the Africa Enterprise Group and president of the Consortium of African Diasporas in the U.S.A. He has been a National Public Radio commentator and a blogger, and is author of “The Doctor’s Date with Death.”