The Nautilus "View as Icons" view uses the incorrect text color (light
background) instead of the correct (dark background) text color with some
GTK themes - namely (but possibly not exclusively), themes with a dark
bg[NORMAL] colour that use Ximian's Industrial engine.

Problem occurs because the widget "background" is not set, yet the widget
calls eel_background_is_dark() on it.   The default behaviour of
eel_background_is_dark() is to treat the background as white, if unknown. 
This is incorrect in this circumstance.

I will attach a screenshot (to prove I'm not crazy, or at least, not crazy
about this particular thing), and a patch which fixes the problem.