When I try to change the color of text or highlighting, there are no color options other than white available.
A heavy question. 1. I would check in Menue:Tools->Option if the color table is there. Under color you should see a table named standard. If it is not there reset your user profile here.
If it still not there try finding the file standard.soc (that is the color table). It is located in C:\users<user>\appdata\roaming\LibreOffice[3|4]\user\config. It’s also in Program files(x86)\Libreoffice[3.6|4.0}\presets\config. copy is from there into the 1.folder.
Remark: (x86) is the location for 64-bit Windows.