A few days ago I asked about a novel where characters interacted sometimes in real life and sometimes in a collective dream. In that case it was A Maze of Death, (or rather Au bout du Labyrinthe, since I read it in french translation) which was a duplicate.
That reminded me of another story with the same double type of interaction. But it is definitely not the same one. This one I read in English. I am positive of that because I had to look for the french translation of the verb "to shuffle".
From the context, it was obvious that this way of walking was a stereotype of African Americans, at least when the book was written, at least 40 years ago.
In fact this is almost the only thing I remember about this story. I don't remember whether it was a novel or short fiction, a whole book or in a collection, on Earth or in space....
But it was SF inasmuch as people could connect their minds to create a collective dream, just as in A Maze of Death. It might be by Philip K. Dick, but I am not at all sure it is the case.
It was probably also a murder mystery, because IRCC, one the characters who was African American (possibly the only one - and of course at that time this was not the phrase that was used) was a policeman or a detective. And he realised at some point that their collective dream had been taken over by a white supremacist, because he shuffled. And even in the dream he knew that he did not shuffle in real life. Or maybe it was when back in real life that he remembered that he had shuffled in the dream. Anyway, I think that the fact that someone had allowed his prejudices to enter the collective dream was very important in the plot.
Sorry I don't remember anything else.
