Mr Uppity of Mr Men fame - but reminds you of being used of a woman? It is definitely a description for a person, not sexed either way in my opinion.
Re. it being racist in US, yes I'm grateful to know that and would be sure never to use it in the US, however we're not in the US.
That's the crux of the matter - to set up worldwide racist bingo based on words from your own country is rather arrogant. The world is bigger than the US experience. Do you intend to amend language every time you come across a word that may offend someone somewhere in the world, or is it only people from the US?
As for ITV they are trying to appease the woke crowd who complain about the "Queen of England" - see this week. So much in fact that BP released a tweet to explain that the Queen wasn't expressing her own opinions and coming up with a bunch of laws on her whim etc.
ITV generally a bunch of hypocrites - the whole shenanigan with Philip and "poor him" duping his wife the whole marriage is supposed to be "brave". No it's not it is cowardly and hypocritical and lying.
Anyhow the only issue is there are a couple of posters who keep dropping in N word and accusing others of racism and it's a bingo of words potentially used in US, that no-one has even used.... Hmmmm wonder why that might be? Trying to derail conversation, never addressing that a particularly offensive word in UK (the P word) and no I don't accept Harry's mealy mouthed words about "not knowing". He revealed far too much of himself. Much rather focus on trying to damn people for using US words - don't throw your garbage in the trash can etc. - it's a whole other language FGS.
Majority of people haven't read Harper Lee and most would have not realised that it was in any way used differently to how the UK use the word.