Avatar perpetuating a "White Messiah" myth?

The thought never occurred to me that James Cameron's Avatar was filled with racial undertones rendering the tiresome "White Knight In Shining Armor" cliche. Yes, I am attuned to racial-gender inequality in American society, particularly entertainment, but I didn't think anything of the like while watching it in twice in theaters; that is until last week. The NY Times ran an article from Columnist David Brooks who asserts that the era we live in produces a perpetual "White Messiah" fable.

Every age produces its own sort of fables, and our age seems to have produced The White Messiah fable.
This is the oft-repeated story about a manly young adventurer who goes into the wilderness in search of thrills and profit. But, once there, he meets the native people and finds that they are noble and spiritual and pure. And so he emerges as their Messiah, leading them on a righteous crusade against his own rotten civilization.

 He continues stating later on,

Yet of all the directors who have used versions of the White Messiah formula over the years, no one has done so with as much exuberance as James Cameron in “Avatar.”  “Avatar” is a racial fantasy par excellence.

This leaves me wondering though, did HollyWhite just slip another subliminal "White Is Right" artificial flavor into my movie drink? I tried my best to look at it from another perspective. Avatar is about taking a stand against corporations and saving the planet which our generation has contributed to polluting, right?

Yes, its a no brainer, but it is also conniving because as Brook argues the movie rests on the assumption that only White males are Alpha enough to lead their crusades. Additionally, only White males can pass the litmus test of acceptance into another ethnic group.  Brooks alludes to other movies which present similar themes: Fern Gully, Dances With Wolves, The Last Samurai.  I'll add a couple of others to the list: The Last Airbender, 21, District 9, The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift (thankfully, Justin Lin was director who pushed for Sung Kang's role to stay juicy).

What's interesting is that I seriously cannot recall a single movie where a foreigner, an Asian male at that, integrates with White America in a similar fashion, becomes the hero, and gets romantically involved with a White woman. The only movie that comes to mind is Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story which is based on real life events where you see what kind of overt racism Lee dealt with living in America.  Has much changed since then?  I'm not convinced that it has. Its as if only White men are capable of integrating with a foreign culture, yet we are not.

The media is the most powerful entity on Earth.  They have the power to make the guilty innocent and to make the innocent guilty, and that's power, because they control the minds of the masses.  -Malcom X

Is this the kind of massive manipulation the US entertainment-media complex is ingraining upon us where sites like Asian Male Revolutions are so critical of?