Hi johnbail,
>is white the olny option for a list item if I set the background color in the html if I send it to be converted to a IOS native app will that color change still be in effect?
Correct at this time the list-item does not expose background color properties. Thus the UI you see in the Designer and Test Center are what you will see in a native app.
Customizable list-item color is on our todo list. I have added your comments to our feature tracking system. Although I have not done this, I believe a workaround is to manually modify the CSS directly or via JavaScript JQuery for list-items.