android TextView: setting the background color dynamically doesn't work

Use et.setBackgroundResource(R.color.white);

Try this:

TextView c1 = new TextView(activity);
c1.setTextColor(getResources().getColor(R.color.solid_red));
c1.setText("My Text");

I agree that a color and a resource have the same type, but I also spend a few hours to find this solution.

To set red color:

textView.setBackgroundColor(0xfff00000);

Or

<color name="solid_red">#fff00000</color>

textView.setBackgroundResource(R.color.solid_red);

I had a similar issue where I was creating a numeric color without considering the leading alpha channel. ie. mytext.setTextColor(0xFF0000) (thinking this would be red ). While this is a red color it is also 100% transparent as it = 0x00FF0000; The correct 100% opaque value is 0xFFFF0000 or mytext.setTextcolor(0xFFFF0000).