TextView background color: bug or misunderstanding?

[Kasper Peeters <kasper peeters phi-sci com>]

I am trying to make the background colour of all TextViews white, using

  gtk_widget_override_background_color()

This does make the background white, but it also makes the color used
for selection highlight white. As a result, I can't see anymore what I
am selecting.

So I thought this might be because I am supposed to use CSS for
styling, but that actually leads to the same problem. If I do the
following (sorry, this is gtkmm code, but the logic should be clear):

  Glib::ustring data = "GtkTextView { background: white; }";
  auto css = Gtk::CssProvider::create();
  css->load_from_data(data);
  auto screen = Gdk::Screen::get_default();
  Gtk::StyleContext::add_provider_for_screen(screen,css,
                            GTK_STYLE_PROVIDER_PRIORITY_USER);

then I also get a white background, but again the selection highlight
color is now white too.

Is this a bug? (this is with gtk-3.10.8). Or am I doing something wrong?
Thanks!

(I have asked this on gtk-list but no-one there seems to have an
answer).

Cheers,
Kasper