‘White People are the default’: A qualitative analysis of medical trainees' perceptions of cultural competency, medical culture, and racial bias

• This study interrogates the role of cultural competency, the dominant medical knowledge regime, by examining how it intellectualizes race, upholds medical hierarchies, and reproduces racial health inequities. • We explore medical trainees' perceptions of cultural competency curricula, race and racial bias training, and their impact on clinical interactions during the COVID-19 pandemic. • We draw on Bonilla-Silva and Peoples' theoretical framing of “white logic, white curriculum” and other anti-racist and anti-oppression frameworks to examine instruction of race and other concepts in medical curricula. • We introduce the novel concept of perfunctory training , to illustrate how knowledge production of white-centered curricula fails to inform culturally relevant practices in an increasingly diverse population. • It is essential to explore the mechanisms that maintain knowledge regimes, biologized notions of race and flawed medical ideologies from different racial groups, which are reflected in patient care.