"Yes, but only in USA."
Piccaninny has been used as a term of abuse at least since the Notting Hill Riots - it actually features as a racist epithet in a Giles cartoon depicting a white rioter being escorted into a hospital by a black doctor in 1958 - it caused controversy then.
It was used as a term of racist abuse in the 1970 during the rise in football violence in the 1970s.
Objections to its featured strongly in the objections to The Black and White Minstrel Show in the late 1970s.
Strong objections to the term were raised in Parliament and in the Press when it was used in Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood speech in 1968
It continued to be used by cretins like Jim Davidson and Bernard Manning, but it was finally generally disappeared from usage in the media some time in the early 80s, through it was occasionally used in dramas to shock.
It is a racist term and has been recognised as such for half a century.
The MacMillan dictionary describes it:
"pickaninny noun
'offensive' a black child. This word is sometimes used by older white people but most people consider it offensive"
It has long been an offensive racist word, anybody who uses it or supports its usage is a racist - we have a racist Foreign Secretary
End of story.
Jim Carroll