I’ve spent days on this too, and although this topic didn’t help. it’s one i came across in my search, so thought i’d update with what worked for me.
I think it’s now quite simple, but very unintuitive. Hopefully my explanation works for you guys too.
IT’S NOT IN THE BBPRESS.CSS file! Arghhhhhhh
Firstly, I started using chrome instead of iexplore/firefox. Using this I navigated to the topic/reply box that wasn’t letting me see the text, right click, and select inspect element. The box at the bottom, and to the right, can then help you identify where it’s picking up styles from. You should see a section at the bottom saying matched styles, in my case ‘content.css’
If you hover over the style name (content.css for me) it should show you the location file and the section of code you need to change
The file I needed to amend was http://www.your_website_here.co.uk/wordpress/wp-includes/js/tinymce/themes/advanced/skins/wp_theme/content.css
And I just changed the section below, where color: #fff was previously different
body { font-family: Georgia, “Times New Roman”, “Bitstream Charter”, Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; color: #fff; margin: 10px; min-height: 100%;}
I really hope this method helps others, as it’s been getting right on my nerves
