Stan Lee has now weighed in and put his foot down on the whole diversity with Spidey and all characters in this new "diversity" media hype era.
http://www.cosmicbooknews.com/content/stan-lee-stands-white-spider-man-says-create-new-characters
From the article -
Now Stan Lee sets the record straight and says they should leave the characters alone and just create new ones.
"I wouldn’t mind, if Peter Parker had originally been black, a Latino, an Indian or anything else, that he stay that way,” Lee told Newsarama. “But we originally made him white. I don’t see any reason to change that.”
While Bendis apparently believes kids aren't allowed to pretend to be a hero of a different "color," Stan Lee thinks that one of Spider-Man's stengths is that his costume enables anyone to potentially identify with the Web Crawler.
"What I like about the costume is that anybody reading Spider-Man in any part of the world can imagine that they themselves are under the costume,” Lee said. “And that’s a good thing.”
Lee continues that it's not about being anti-gay or anti-black, and even mentions what may fans have stated, which is they wouldn't want to see the black characters changed as well.
“It has nothing to do with being anti-gay, or anti-black, or anti-Latino, or anything like that,” Lee said. “Latino characters should stay Latino. The Black Panther should certainly not be Swiss. I just see no reason to change that which has already been established when it’s so easy to add new characters. I say create new characters the way you want to. Hell, I’ll do it myself.”