You cannot create works of fiction based on the subjective guesswork of what your audience might find offensive. If we go down that route all of us will be out of a job. Your job as a writer is simply to write something that's true.

I'd tell your publisher quite firmly that nobody ever died of being offended. Offence is a choice taken after the fact. You've got your reasons for including the character and its your editor's job to make your writing better not try and second guess what a bunch of oversensitive readers are going to think.

I'd like to complain to Stephanie Meyer about her writing of vampires. As someone who suffers with skin condition, I was offended that she wrote about perfect skinned individuals who glitter in the sun. Please arrange for all the books to be pulped at a time that's convenient to me.

I don't think it's offensive - but then I'm not easily offended and it's a work of fiction. If it is deemed offensive and you get held accountable by your readers you can either apologise and promise to do better or laugh it off. I'm a fan of the latter because pandering to oversensitive idiots with too much time on their hands is the quickest way to becoming cultural iconoclasts. When you reward oversensitivity you don't solve the problem, you double it.