COVID-19 mortality increases dramatically with age and is also substantially higher among Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) populations in the United States . These two facts introduce tradeoffs because BIPOC populations are younger than white populations . In analyses of California and Minnesota--demographically divergent states--we show that COVID vaccination schedules based solely on age benefit the older white populations at the expense of younger BIPOC populations with higher risk of death from COVID-19 . We find that strategies that prioritize high-risk geographic areas for vaccination at all ages better target mortality risk than age-based strategies alone, although they do not always perform as well as direct prioritization of high-risk racial/ethnic groups.