The space are not really removed, they are collapse by the internal browser. This behavior can be changed using the white-space property in CSS:
.test {
white-space: pre;
color:red;
}
In the following image I applied a class to the positioned box on the right (.test) and added a style rule to the context_all_styles.css. The box on the left shows the standard behavior.
This can also be set in the Box Formatting dialog.