Honestly, I think that would be worse - I have my prefs set so that it's white(ish), over black and that seems good legibility to me for text.
Differing text colors would mean variable contrast making it harder to scan - the beauty of the old scheme was that it offered the legibility while the backdrop indicated status clearly as well, just like the thumbnail page view does.
What about applying the color fill to the whole folder icon ?
Thx.
Andrew Mumford