Shamus Khan: The New Elitists

Shamus Khan is an assistant professor of sociology at Columbia and author of “Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School.”

YOU can tell a lot about people by looking at their music collections. Some have narrow tastes, mostly owning single genres like rap or heavy metal. Others are far more eclectic, their collections filled with hip-hop and jazz, country and classical, blues and rock. We often think of such differences as a matter of individual choice and expression. But to a great degree, they are explained by social background. Poorer people are likely to have singular or “limited” tastes. The rich have the most expansive....

This was not always the case.

In 1880 William Vanderbilt tried to buy one of the 18 coveted boxes at the New York Academy of Music on 14th Street by offering $30,000 for it. Vanderbilt represented new money, and to the old families controlling the academy his attempt to buy his way into a place reserved for them was a crass affront to their dignity. Money may be king in certain parts of New York society. But not everything can be bought.

Or so it seemed. After his bid was rejected, Vanderbilt joined other nouveaux riches families like the Goulds, Rockefellers and Whitneys and founded the Metropolitan Opera House Company. With 122 private boxes, there was plenty of space for the city’s expanding elite....