Yes...tried that too
I'm using styleClass="pagecontentreadonly" ...
<html:select disabled="true" styleClass="pagecontentreadonly" name="ideaForm" property="initiativeList" multiple="true" size="5">
...defined on my .css as -->
.pagecontentreadonly { background: #EFEFF1; color: black; font-family: verdana, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; }
and it still overrides the text of color:black!