There is a large body of research that suggests that health disparities exist in the U.S. and that they disproportionally affect African-Americans and Latinos. A number of sociodemographic factors have been proposed to account for these health disparities including diet, physical activity levels, smoking, age, and utilization of healthcare services. However, findings from empirical research studies and from national health organizations have clearly indicated that these factors alone cannot account for the health disparities and suggest that racism and race-related stress are important contributors. The present study examined the relationships among psychological and physiological race-related stress and health among African-Americans and Latinos. The study examined the contributions of ethnic identity levels, gender, SES and skin color on race-related stress and health relationships. Participants were exposed to videotaped vignettes depicting racist acts as well as to a control condition while salivary cortisol levels were collected at baseline and 20 minutes after exposure to stimulus and control conditions. Participants were also administered the Index of Race-Related Stress-Brief, the Subjective Health Complaints Inventory, the New Immigrant Survey Skin Color Scale, and the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure. Findings indicated that physiological reactions as measured by salivary cortisol levels were significantly higher for the race-related videotaped vignettes compared to baseline and neutral conditions. The results also revealed that gender, ethnic identity levels, skin color and family SES contributed to race-related stress and health. These results suggest that racism negatively impacts physiological processes in African-Americans and Latinos, however, prospective studies are needed to clarify the differential effect of these variables on race-related stress and health among these populations.