I am also a local of the caches in question. And I have had a brief (also ongoing) dialogue with the cache owner, who is obviously a well-versed, experienced cacher using a new account. Here are my thoughts in the situation in general and to some of the specific subtleties brought up by the original poster.
1. In general, terrain and high-crime "danger" factors are completely different. As many have stated, you choose the danger in a tree. You may not choose the danger another chooses to inflict upon you in a high-crime area.
2. The cache owner of these specific hides has made the subtle (in public) and overt (in private) statement that people feel they are unsafe in these areas due to preconceived notions, aka racism. I have lived in high-risk areas where I was the target of racial crime and I have a fairly vast personal history with ethnicities outside of my own. And one thing I have learned is: danger is danger, no matter the color, gender, ideology, or economic background. These areas are dangerous and it has nothing to do with racism. The cache owner equates this danger with the danger one faces while doing terrain caches. I couldn't disagree more, but everyone is entitled to their opinion on what danger they think one should endure while caching. The problem is that these caches are designed to be extremely difficult and those who have found them have spent hours doing so. Putting yourself in a high-crime area for hours is not a good situation to be in. So the question is, why would a person create a separate account and only put this type of hide out there? In my opinion, the point seems to be to show the general geocacher that they hold preconceived biases toward people or areas. While I am sure this is true for every human, I am not sure the proper place to play out this type of "lesson" is in a dangerous geocaching area. Wihtout mentioning it in logs. In fact, any mention has been that the areas are ok and not the opposite. I'll just cut this point off here because it has become too tangential.
3. The original poster has stated he has questioned his own beliefs about the chance-vs-choice element of terrain caching. Is it really a choice if a limb breaks while you're in a tree or is that the luck of the draw? I have to disagree with him when he wonders if it's not a choice. That uncertainty is PART of the choice you make with high terrain. You cannot go into a cache expecting a physical object to hold up for eternity. That is just an inleuctable reality of our visible world (haha). There is still a major distinction between high-crime and terrain caches. High-crime areas are shown to be high-crime areas by high repeatability of problems. There may be a freak occurence where the tree breaks under your foot, but high-crime areas are deemed to be that way because of the non-random reality of danger. That, to me, is the differnce. You are at the mercy of free-thinking individuals.
My concern is for people who do not know the area and note a 5.0 difficulty cache that has been found by 7 user names in the first few days. Well, there were that many names because the cachers went in with the group mentality for safety. I am willing to have discussions about racial biases until the cows come home. But that topic is completely outside the realm of geocaching. What is in the realm of caching is safety.