An Albury resident has called out the behaviour of a stranger who racially abused him and says a small minority within the community needs to be more accepting of multiculturalism.
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East Albury's Ashwin Ayyagari said he was walking on the footpath near the Borella Road and Schubach Street roundabout, when the passing driver of a red Barina on P plates yelled out the window at him.
"He told me to go back to my own country. That made me extremely angry," Mr Ayyagari said.
"I'm Indian, but that doesn't give you a right to shout a racist remark like that."
Born in Australia, Mr Ayyagari is an Australian citizen, but he said even if he was born overseas, it wouldn't justify the racist behaviour.
He said he was shocked and hadn't been the target of racial abuse since an incident in 2006.
"It's not normal for someone to say that ... don't really hear it so often in Albury Wodonga," he said.
"I would categorise it as a rare occurrence, it's very rare.
"There are only like five per cent of the people in this world that will be arrogant and ignorant, and they will do anything they can to put you down."
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Mr Ayyagari is considering reporting the incident to police, but said he wanted the community to educate themselves on themselves on the role of multiculturalism.
"We need people to open up their minds about different cultures, different ethnicities," he said.
"What that does is it brings unity amongst all the community, it enriches our community, it opens up the mind of people and the people who support that have my respect.
"The minority of people are racist, but we just can't have that, we want a multicultural world here."
Albury Wodonga Ethnic Communities Council community executive officer Richard Ogetii said all people belonged in the Twin Cities.
"Our community ought to be a safe space for everyone, regardless of their race, gender, religion or place of origin," he said.
"While cases of racial discrimination are not common, the few cases identified must be called out and reported, whether those cases are taking place in real life or online."
Mr Ogetii said even a single case of racism was unacceptable.
"We need to start the conversation where we say racism is not welcome in our region and we need to have those conversations within our homes, within our social circles, and publicly ... so at the end of the day we don't normalise racial discrimination," he said.
"When you look at multiculturalism, everybody brings something different and it adds to the flavour of the community.
"Multiculturalism enriches our interactions,our experiences, because we learn from people who have different perspectives, we're able to even come up with better approaches to different issues."
Anybody who experiences or sees an abusive incident can report it to Albury Police on (02) 6023 9299 or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
In an emergency contact 000.
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