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For what its worth it is still controversial with me. I really liked ultimate spiderman, and Bendis (the writer) specifically said that he had the idea to add a black spiderman and decided that just adding him in with Pete still around wouldn't really work and so he started looking for a way to kill Parker off, which really was in my view incredibly brazen and the fact that he felt comfortable saying it and everyone else seemed to applaud him for it blew my mind.
However I am also not surprised that it worked out as well as it did, as there were many factors working in its favor.
This was in Ultimate Spiderman, not the main universe book. That didn't help me, I liked USM more, but the Ultimate universe was always an alternate universe where lots of bold/edgy takes on characters could be played with in a frankly low stakes way. That made killing White Spiderman explicitly so he could be replaced with Black/Hispanic Spiderman somewhat less of a provocation.
In the interview where he said he killed Peter explicitly so he could replace him Bendis said he'd had that idea years ago and had been looking for a good time to kill Peter, which means he waiting until a time where the death would be more set up and more epic, and critically less jarring and less obviously forced.
Timing. This was not part of a clear trend to replace white or male characters with more progressive versions so it was able to be judged more on its own merits. Unlike a few years ago when Hulk, Captain America, Thor, and a few other characters were all replaced with ethnic/female options at the same time. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action. If something occurs in isolation it gets more benefit of the doubt.
Quality, obviously the most important part. If quality is maintained people with forgive most sins. I dropped the book when they did this switch (I'd considered keeping on with it before the "yes this was done for racial replacement reasons" interview) so I cannot say first hand that the book was good, but Bendis is very talented (though he was on the downslope at the time he was still well above average) and this was one of his babies, and general opinion was pretty high on the change (hard to be sure how real that kind of thing is since anyone saying it sucks gets called racist and their opinion buried and every positive opinion signal boosted, but having been through this kind of thing a bunch of times this one certainly seemed very genuine). The thing with fan favorites in the current comic book market which has veered SUPER woke over the past decade is that fans who don't like it drop out (as I did with this move) which leaves the remainder people who by definition do like it, but this was an early enough move that I think for the most part it was in fact very well received.
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