It looks like this has been an issue several times in the past, and with the new Gmail update, several popular themes make it very hard to read the RTM strip font.

I use the sea theme in Chrome, and the grass theme in Firefox, and each has some elements that are light enough to make it difficult to read, even with the minimal amount of drop shadow they apply.

Could we have an option to make the RTM strip have an opaque background of some sort? Even plain white is OK if the font becomes something dark enough to provide consistent contrast.