Richard Dyer understands cinema as not 'only entertainment' (Dyer, 2005 [1992]), but as a cultural site where the perception of reality is reconfigured. Nowhere in Dyer's work does this endeavour shine out as strongly and brilliantly as in White. This work, which was first published in 1997 and has since become a classic of Film and Cultural Studies, is an exploration of the very stuff that cinema is made of – light – which Dyer leads us to perceive in its racial dimension. This essay discusses Dyer's analysis of the visual production of racism and explores the various conditions of racism’s exposure in different regimes of representation.