TextView setTextColor is ignored when LinearLayout android:background is set

The code is at the very bottom. I can change the color of the text [android:id="@+id/vonage_login_status"] by running

vonage_login_status.setTextColor(this.getResources().getColor(R.color.light_grey));

However, I want a different colored background, so I added the line android:background="@color/background But after I added the line, the setTextColor method is being ignored. Any ideas how do I fix it?

Thanks for reading....

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
    <RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="fill_parent"
        android:background="@color/background"
        android:orientation="horizontal">
            <LinearLayout
                android:layout_width="wrap_content"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                android:orientation="vertical"
                android:layout_weight="1"
                android:gravity="center_vertical">
                <LinearLayout
                android:id="@+id/vonage_login_status_view"
                android:layout_width="fill_parent"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                android:orientation="horizontal"
                android:clickable="true">
                <TextView
                    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
                    android:layout_gravity="center"
                    android:id="@+id/vonage_login_status"
                    android:layout_weight="1"
                    android:gravity="left"
                    android:singleLine="true"
                    android:ellipsize="end"
                    android:padding="0px">
                    </TextView>  
                </LinearLayout&开发者_StackOverflow中文版gt;
        </LinearLayout>
</RelativeLayout>

I'm somewhat new to Android but I sometimes use these questions as a learning exercise, what you say you want to do seems to work for me and I learnt along the way. However, if that xml is all of the layout file it seems to have a lot of layouts stacked on top of one another and does not seem to nest properly, perhaps simplifying it would help.