Comment 6 for bug 459647

OK, I was having this same issue. What I've found is that I can change the cursor theme by running the gconf configuration editor and navigating to Desktop->gnome->peripherals->mouse and manually changing the value of the "cursor_theme" key. I changed it from "default" to "whiteglass" and the cursor_size key from 18 to 27. I then logged out and back in and now have the whiteglass cursor theme working well. It seems that the Appearance Preferences dialog is not setting this key when the cursor theme is customized through the preferences menu.