Should I uninstall of my CS6 applications and try the install again?

First try a reset of the preferences. Screenshots looks like you are on a Mac so hold down option key while restarting Bridge and choose reset preferences.

If this does not help can you provide more details about machine specs (Graphic card with VRAM, RAM and free space) as well as versions of OS and Bridge?

Graphics  NVIDIA GeForce 9400 VRAM 256 MB

Could you try this:

Quit all running applications except Bridge and see if this helps.

Your graphic card does meet the minimum specs with 256 MB but they recommend 512 MB VRAM. And to be honest, if you want to enjoy all features of CS6 with pleasure 1GB would suite you better. It is a little investment but you have much benefit of such an upgrade.

Other options (but I really suspect the graphic card) are to check if you have enough free space left (at least 10 % free space on your HD is needed for good functioning)

Check and repair permissions using Apple Disk utility.

Create a new user account for testing and see if the problem still exists.

Reinstall is pointless for solving problems if you don't deactivate and run the Adobe CS clean tool also before installing again.

With the CS6 interface you can change color theme, brightness, background, and accent color.

My first thought also but you can't achieve that effect with the sliders, the text stays always visible either black on white, white on black or grey shades

I even used the Adobe CS cleanup tool to remove all of the older CS instances to see if this was the issue.

Could you try it in a new user account just for testing? If you switch user accounts be sure to have Bridge quitted in the user account on the background.

If the reset window also comes up black it is probably in the OS as Bridge has not started.

That's a good thought, all the more reason for a new test account

My next step is to reformat and rebuild the IMac to see if this corrects the issue.

That might be the quickest way to check if it was the OS or the graphic card. However an archive and install of the OS might be even quicker but if you don't depend much on the iMac it seems the best way to make a fresh start.

Don't forget to make a proper back up of all important files, downloads and customized settings etc. I usually make also a copy of my user library content on an external disk before reinstall. There are always some buried files you might forget to back up

Could you report back if this solved the issue ?

I can only assume that there was some minor setting on my machine from when I did the upgrage to Lion

I'm afraid that might be a perfect assuming. Their seem to reside a lot of hidden or invisible files over the system and I also suspect Bridge to use several of this files that even are not deleted with the Cleaner Tool Adobe provides.

I'm planning to upgrade to 10.7 soon (have to because Mobile Me is ending by the end of next month) and every time I upgrade to a new version I start with an empty disk from scratch. (I even use the option to overwrite everything with zero's once because some say that it will provide you from having undiscovered bad blocks...)

Glad it worked for you!