The end of chapter 8 is an interesting and subtle exploration of race and gender.

When the fire destroys Miss Maudie’s house, it comes right after the day it snowed.  Scout and Jem make a snowman caricature of Mr. Avery in the yard using mud (black) and covering it with snow (white).  The snowman is referred to by Scout as a “Morphodite” because she mishears Miss Maudie call it a hermaphrodite (because it was male and they made it female by giving it Miss Maudie’s hat.

Just as the snowman is black with a white shell, Miss Maudie turns out to be white with a black shell.  When Jem sees her hands, they are described in an interesting way.

A network of tiny lines crisscrossed her palms, brown with dirt and dried blood. (ch 8)

Jem notes that she “ruined” her hands, because they are now black.  He then asks her why she did not get a “colored man” to help her with the work.  If the reader did not get the connection between the racism of the snowman and the hands, that line would get him thinking.

By the way, there is no such thing as a "morphodite" in fact.

Jem and Scout sleep later the morning after Miss Maudie's house burns down. They don't have to go to school, so they retrieve and bring back to Miss Maudie some of her things. She has been out in the cold for hours gardening. Her hands have been "ruined," Jem says, from working in the dirt. He shows his internalized, but innocent, racism when he asks her

“Why don’t you get a colored man [to help with the work]?”

Jem then offers himself and Scout as helpers to her.

Maudie ignores Jem's comment about getting a black man to do the work for her, but tells him that he and Scout have other things they need to do.

Lee shows how unconscious racism has infected Jem with the idea that blacks are there to do the dirty work whites don't want to do, but then shows how he innocently puts himself and Scout on the same level as blacks when he offers to do the same work.

Lee reveals how casually racism can come to seem as if it is normal to children who grow up in its midst, but she also shows that Jem is trying to solve a problem for Miss Maudie more than he is being racist.

What's interesting about this conversation is that Jem displays the institutional racism of the town while at the same time showing how he has not internalized what racism really is. He equates himself and Scout to any "colored man" in the quote:  

"'You’ve ruined ‘em,” said Jem. 'Why don’t you get a colored man?' There was no note of sacrifice in his voice when he added, 'Or Scout’n’me, we can help you.'"

As an innocent, Jem is not actually racist himself. He and Scout are just as eligible for the job. Still, his underlying assumption that it is not a job for a white man shows how the town's racism has infected him.

Scout echoes this ingrained racism when she criticizes Jem's mudman. In her mind, a snowman is only valuable when it is made of snow—that is, when it is white.

Miss Maudie is outside in the cold when the children go and talk to her. When Jem finds that she has been out in the cold all morning trying to get her garden cleaned up, he takes her cold and dirty appearance in, and suggests that she hire "a colored man" to do the job for her. Jem does not consider that the colored man would be just as miserable out in the cold, nor does he suggests merely hiring "someone" to do it. It is indicative of racism that Jem would suggest that such an undesirable task be relegated to a man of race.

After Miss Maudie's home burns down in chapter eight, the children visit her the next morning to return some of her belongings and console her about the loss of her home. Jem and Scout are both surprised to discover that Miss Maudie is not mourning the loss of her home and she tells them,

"Why, I hated that old cow barn. Thought of settin‘ fire to it a hundred times myself, except they’d lock me up" (Lee, 75).

Miss Maudie then questions Scout and Jem about their visit from Boo Radley and mentions that her only concern was all the "danger and commotion" the fire caused. Scout then takes note of Miss Maudie's complexion and notices that her palms are "brown with dirt and dried blood."

The fire that destroyed Miss Maudie's home can symbolically represent the destructive nature of racism and her old home can symbolically represent the Old South. Miss Maudie is happy to see her old home destroyed in the same way that she desires to see the racist Jim Crow Laws abolished. Her concerns regarding the "danger and commotion" caused by the fire can symbolically represent her concerns involved in changing the racist southern culture. The complexion of her hands also corresponds with her progressive views regarding racial equality. Harper Lee's use of symbolism throughout Miss Maudie's conversation with Jem and Scout illustrates the theme of racism, which is prevalent throughout the novel.

The author's symbolic use of racism in the destruction of Miss Maudie's house is shown in several manners. First, she is happy to see her old house destroyed; now, she can build a new one from scratch to her own specifications. This procedure is symbolic of how racism must be destroyed completely before more enlightened thought can rise anew. It was earlier illustrated by her hatred of the nut grass which can't simply be pulled up, but which must be destroyed at the roots. Her beloved plants are "charred" black, but to Maudie, they are still beautiful; and like the house, they can be replanted and brought to new life. Maudie herself symbolizes that skin color is unimportant with her "palms, brown with dirt and dried blood." And the Morphodite Snowman, once black on the inside and white on the outside, has lost its whiteness, reduced to a black, frozen shell--symbolic of the irrelevance of skin color and the importance of what is inside a man.